Trip to ILL in Grenoble

Still not managing to write very regularly, I just never seem to get time. Anyway, I will be going to ILL in Grenoble on 27 June, we have 2 days of beam time there to look at the C16O1-5 series on D17. Hopefully I will also get chance to look at a few of my gold samples too, but we’ll see how it goes.

I have just got hold of 30 50 mm silicon wafers, and am in the process of hydrophobising it. It seems to be going fine, but we will see just how it’s going once I have deposited some samples. I am going to go across to use the D8 in chemistry to test my samples before taking them to France.

Saw the Venus transit this morning too - went up on the roof of the Hicks building to have a look at it. It was actually pretty interesting, and the image was very striking. It was also the best kind of astronomy - in the middle of a beautifully sunny day. There was a great breeze up there!

It is absolutely boiling in the lab and office at the moment. The air conditioning in the lab doesn’t seem to be working properly - temperatures are up to 28 C and I am worried it will affect my samples and how they deposit. Usually deposit at 20 C, and the air conditioner really doesn’t seem to be working.

Did some more AFM on some new Pd nanoparticle samples. The first AFM images showed large structures between 200 and 400 nm across and nearly 80 nm tall - some even had spikes on them. The new images show nothing like that. Very flat films, with very few features - although I don’t know if I trust the images produced at the moment by it. I am being trained to use it by Andy too, but at the moment the images coming out don’t seem right…

My new computer is still working great - although my old one is totally dead. I think it is a dead motherboard. Anyway, it’s very late and I should try to get some sleep.