Large-area Ultra-thin Membranes Using XeF2 Senior Design

For the last three weeks, we have increased the substrate bias power from 25 W to 32 W (for both oxide and a-Si) to adress some film quality issues.  I have found that it is “harder” to open pores in a film deposited at higher bias.  Below are micrographs showing the difference in porosity for…

I made this post last week concerning testing this procedure to make sure that the resulting solution is in fact fluorescent BSA and not just a mixture of free BSA and free TRITC. Unfortunately, I exercised my right as a rookie to make silly mistakes and confused 5-TMRIA for 5-TRITC! The two particles are very similar…

I am attempting to manufacture a range of npMgF2 thicknesses as demonstrated in my recent CCD post. Yesterday, I undershot my thicknesses substantially, I believe because of construction vibrations in the building. However, this results in some of the thinnest npMgF2 structure I have ever been able to image. I was targeting 15 nm, but…

I took a sample from w304 over to the Krauss Lab and had them try to image it with AFM. Here are a few pictures (for some reason the color scales weren’t included in a couple of them, but they go from 0-dark to 5-light nm): In both images you can surprisingly see the pores….

Towards Surface Enhanced Raman Functionalization of Nanopocket membranes   Introduction Use of Raman microscopy is used to evaluate the chemical profile of substances.  Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a signal-boosting techniques where the weak Raman signal is amplified through plasmon interactions at a metalized (often nanostructured) surface.   SERS for extracellular vesicles (EVs) was recently…

The human IgG did not seem to diffuse through the membrane the first time we conducted a diffusion experiment. Barrett believed that the lack of diffusion was most likely due to protein aggregates blocking the pores. So, the human IgG was filtered, and this post is the result of a second round of diffusion experiments….