SENTENCES YOU WILL …
... probably never read in a published article. I'm not exactly going for a Ph.D., but I've been reading a lot of articles the past months, so I found this one from PHD Comics quite nice:
LONG WORKDAYS
The past weeks, the past month actually, it's been long days and not much fun going on. I'm currently having a break and tried out the Polarize app for iPhone. So, here's the photo. It represents my life at the moment.
NEGLSPRETTEN
Yesterday, the first beachvolley tournament of the year was held in Dødens dal (Valley of death), here in Trondheim. The weather was good and plenty of participants were eager to kick-start the season.
I participated with Christoffer from my volleyball team, and we both had a great day, despite some drops of rain in the afternoon. We got through to the quarter finals, but met strong competition against the tournament winners. However, we did win the first set, which proves that we can be quite good when we don't think too much and do everything right!
SOMETHING STUPID …
Assassin's Creed II for PS3!
Yesterday, I bought Assassin's Creed II for PS3. Probably not the best idea considering that my plan this Easter was to work well on my thesis project. That is of course still the plan, just a bit harder to complete?
Assassin's Creed II is a marvelous game. Man, it's great. Fantastic graphics and enjoyable gameplay. Andreas and I spent most of Saturday afternoon and night playing. Even this morning, I spent 4 hours in Renaissance Italy.
The only downside is that it was expensive (less money for food this Easter), that I actually do not own a PS3 console, and surely, that I will have a harder time staying in school. That's actually quite a few sides pointing down ... Uhm. No need to panic, all I need to do is keep my dicipline straight and stick to my "work efficiently during Easter plan".
Good plan.
SNEEK-PEEK INTO NTNU NANOLAB
Well, Easter is just around the corner and work pase slows down a bit. Therefore I thought I'd make a post about the NTNU Nanolab.
What is it?
The Nanolab is NTNU's state-of-the-art cleanroom, and also my main laboratory during my thesis project. My project is multi-diciplinary, so I spend time in different labs for each part of the work. At the Nanolab, I fabricate the devices I'm using to perform electrical characterization of single nanowires.
Below, I've tried to show you a bit of the Nanolab and explain what you see. Enlarge images by clicking them.
More text below the picture.
When entering the Nanolab, one start in the end of the corridor and work your way towards where this picture is taken.
Ready for action in the ISO5&6 areas (click to enlarge)
The procedure for getting dressed starts even before the dressing corridor. First, you must put on a hairnet and some dark flip-flops. Then, starting in the corridor, you switch to another pair of flip-flops - these are white.
Then you take on the hood, the body suit and then you put on the "booties" outside the white flipflops. Almost done, all that remains is your mouth cover and your gloves.
It's time to enter the lab.
The Nanolab consists of an area for chemical methods and a cleanroom for physical methods (which this sneek-peek is about).
The physical lab is made out of a main corridor (seen in below image) and five arms containing different equipment. The first two arms are of clean room level ISO7, while the three inner arms are of the cleaner ISO 5 and ISO6 (about cleanroom classifications).
Main corridor of the physical methods area
The aim of my thesis project is to characterize semiconductor nanowires. To do this I need to make metal contacts onto the nanowires. A nanowire is typically 2-4 micrometre and 50-100 nanometre in diameter. Making such contacts is done using two machines:
I might explain the manchines in a later postm later, but lots of time is spent next to these two machines. Additionally, we use photolithography machine, resist spinners and of course the work benches. The machines can be seen below.
Light is yellow'ish because of the light sensitive chemicals used in this cleanroom area.
I will try to explain my thesis project in more detail in a later post. Happy easter to you all!
The fourth arm in the physical methods area. This is where I spend my time in the Nanolab. The light is yellow because of the photolithography machine where we use material that are light sensitive.
A photomontage of some chemicals, resist spinners and the border between two very clean environments