A simple experiment that has never been done is to make a direct comparison between annealing inside and outside the susceptor. Intuitively, we would expect the morphologies to be quite different since the heating mechanism is different for both cases. Inside the susceptor, the film is heated through blackbody radiation from the susceptor. Without the…
I carried out experiments to test the adsorption of 1 mg/ml of BSA on NHS-PEG surfaces.This time the APTES layer was deposited from solution phase on to the silicon surface in contrast to vapor phase (YES) deposition. Again adsorption of BSA on different layers was confirmed using spectroscopic ellipsometry. Protocol for surface modification: The chips were left…
I few weeks ago, I had a couple wafers made with different size squares and slits. I posted my first results here and here. In that experiment, I showed pretty dramatic 2D structures over both supported and free-standing membranes with rectangle shapes. Also, I showed vacuole formation at (almost) the single cell level on square…
Today I deposited two 30 nm thick Si films and annealed one at 1000 C for 1 min and the other at 1000 C for 5 min. My running hypothesis is that performing an Ar sputter after the silicon deposition creates “broken” bonds that seed crystallization. Therefore, the crystallization should nucleate at the interface and…
In a continuing study on how a post-silicon deposition Ar sputter affects morphology, I annealed three 15-nm films for 10 s, 60 s, and 300 s. If you recall in my first report, I found that the Ar sputter increases the porosity slightly for a 1000 C RTP and dramatically for a 900 C RTP….
I tried to measure the thickness of the non-carbonized and carbonized membranes for the paper using SEM. To have a clear cut of the membrane I place the membrane chip upside down on a silicon wafer piece, then bend the membrane chip with tweezers so the membrane sticks to the wafer while breaking of the…
I recently began working directly with Dr. Harold Smith’s A3G protein. In my previous posts, I worked with BSA and IgG in order to develop a small-scale diffusion set-up able to reach equilibrium before it dries out. These preliminary steps were working towards my ultimate design for a quick and accurate diffusion set-up for A3G….
Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is one of the important growth factors/signaling factors that affect endothelial cells. It is involved in angiogenesis, vessel regrowth during wound healing, vessel development and other vascular functions. Since this is the most commonly studied growth factor in in vitro angiogenesis assays, I’ve been thinking about it for awhile. If…
In all of my experiments involving vacuoles, I’ve seeded at 50000 cells/cm2 which gets the cells to confluence after ~ 1 day of growth. I’ve always seen vacuoles with these parameters. For this experiment, I wanted to see what the cells would look like after 1 day but at a much lower seeding density. The…
A couple months ago, I tried to use tetramethylrhodamine (TAMRA) as a fluid-phase marker to label vacuoles. The idea is that the only way this stain could be internalized is if it is pinocytosed, eventually ending up in vacuoles. If you follow this link, the dye worked OK but not great. I found a couple…