Wednesday, July 8, 2009

STM Spectroscopy

Well everything can't go swimmingly. While i managed to get lovely images of the surface with atomic resolution. The second task of the day seems to be a little more difficult to accomplish. This was to obtain stable Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy curves from the silicon surface. This should show an approximation of the Density of States. I woudl be able to see the energy levels of the surface and of the bulk filled and empty states. However it seems this miught be a bit beyond my capabilities tonight. The probelm is there is some vibrations within my system. Coming from who knows where. There are a lot of things that hang off the whole system. It could be any of them. It could also be from the trainline which runs just next to the labs where i work. A lot of effort has been made to make sure that the vibrations are neutralized. There is the concrete block with pneumatic ssuspension the machine sits on, then there are the air legs that the STM floats on and finally a spring suspension unit that the STM head hangs off of. So who knows? tomorrow i will have to pin down every possible source of vibration in the system. Yee Hah. thats an exciting one...

Also one of the things on the electronics rack makes a beep about every 20 minutes or so. I cant figure out which one it is. Very annoying!

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