This post presents an overview of my work for the last 3 years. Essentially I’ve been developing new techniques for structuring materials on the sub milimeter scale by a combination of laser ablation, plasma chemistry and standard wet chemistry. Silicon has been the wonder material of the late 20th century and looks set to continue …
Category Archives: science
A matter of scale (ice spikes and silicon pillars)
One of the great things about science is how interlinked everything is once you start looking deeply enough. One example of this came a couple of months back when I was reviewing the electron micrographs from the latest experiment. My work involves the growing of meso-scale (about a 100th of a millimeter) pillars on a …
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Death of a pioneer
On Friday 16th September, Gordon Gould the inventor of the laser died. Gould claimed that the idea and principles for the laser came to him one afternoon in 1957. His lab book details his ideas on a page under the title “Some rough calculations on the feasibility of a LASER: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission …
Off for a bit. Or Why I lothe and detest and want to maimstabmurderdeathkill powerpoint.
Tomorrow sees me heading off to Cardiff for the ISSC-15 conference. Just under a week of geeking my particular variety of science with a few hundred like minded individuals at the UK’s premier surface science conference. Looking at the program, the will be talks on everything from ablation (my field) to catalysis to xenon adsorption …
A break from thesis writing.
The one downside to have had some very good news yesterday[1] is that I now have to spend a week making material to send away. This means at least two whole days in the lab, with all that entails (sulphur smells, strobe flashes from the laser, noise from the laser and other gear, etc). Then …