Week+of+5-13-2013

5-16-2013 I came into the lab today and began scanning a sample of un-annealed gold in an attempt to anneal it. AJ-2.20 µm, 400 ms/line, 4 A/D. AK-5000 Å, 400 ms/line, 16 A/D. After this image, I took 10 steps backwards then heated it for 8 seconds. After that, I had approached the tip too quickly without letting the sample sufficiently cool and I lost the spot in this image and the previous image. Although I had lost this opportunity, I would say that it was a good experience anyway because it really cemented into my mind the importance of waiting for the sample to cool before approaching again. Furthermore, the tip was not of great quality and I was not able to see much in this image anyway. AL-2.20 µm, 400 ms/line, 4 A/D. Following this image, I moved the tip 10 steps backward and then reapproached to make sure I was able to get the same area and as seen in the next image, I succeeded. AM-2.20 µm, 400 ms/line, 4 A/D. I zoomed in to the upper middle of this image. AN-5000 Å, 400 ms/line, 16 A/D. I took 15 steps back and heated the sample for 10 seconds then waited 5 minutes for the sample to cool down before I approached. AO-2.20 µm, 400 ms/line, 4 A/D. Unfortunately, this image was not of the same region of the sample as before. I went to move the Y-offset up and pressed the range button to find that someone had adjusted the offset before without pressing range and I had actually been scanning in a different spot than I had thought. I adjusted the range and scanned again. AP-2.2 µm, 400 ms/line, 4 A/D. Following this image, I moved the scanning region back to its original position and scanned it with a 45.00 degree offset. AQ- 2.2 µm, 400 ms/line, 4 A/D. I adjusted the angular offset back to its original position and moved the Y-offset downards to continue looking for the original region. AR- 2.2 µm, 400 ms/line, 4 A/D. This image displays a surface filled with an abnormally large amount of junk which is usually caused by a tip crash but I had been monitoring the tip with the Oscilloscope and it never appeared to have crashed while scanning so I am unsure about where this junk originated from because remnants of this junk were not present in any previous areas. Perhaps there was a tip change and it was interacting differently with the surface than previously which would be quite unfortunate.