Marcus D. Hanwell's Blog

I am going to France tomorrow - or may be that should read today now as it has gone 12 AM. Really disorganised - I have been so busy that I am up now printing out directions, eticket receipts, itineries, packing my bag and generally trying to make sure everything is ready! It has been a really hectic few weeks, and I really need a few more days to prepare!

I have loads of samples anyway. The hostels on site at ILL are closed/full, and so I will be staying in a hotel in Grenoble. We only have two days on D17, and so I will be back on Wednesday. I don't think we will get through all the samples I have anyway with the time available - but I do hope we have enough to get some good data... It is my first ever trip for my PhD and so I really want it to go well

Anyway, I am going to have to run as I am really tired, need to finish packing and get to Manchester airport terminal 3 for 10:00am in the morning.

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.