Week 5

This week one of my childhood dreams came true. Also, I made good progress on my project. My childhood dream was to work in a place where I had to wear a lot of different things to prevent me as a person contaminating anything around. I needed to go into a clean room to make a new sample. My advisor was out of town and so another man in my division Oleg who does a lot of work in the clean room took me over and showed me the place. It was the highlight of my week to see all the different things that go on in there and to see the process of how my samples are made. I had heard about sputtering but I didn’t really know how it all worked. My samples have a 200nm thick thin film of iron on silicon and so we use e-beam sputtering to put that thin of a layer on the silicon wafer. For those who don’t know what sputtering is it is a process where a metal or other substance being deposited on a target. In my case the iron is being deposited on the silicon target. The electron beam is shot at the iron and then the iron is excited and sputters onto the silicon. With the samples I use phosphoric acid to etch off a little bit of the iron. Earlier this week I found out that I cannot leave my sample in for longer than 30s or the whole layer of iron is off. This is good to know because then I can know what increments of time I etch the sample. I hope this week to make a lot more scans and try to find another acid to etch with to see if it will not etch it off so fast. This will allow us to get more scans because we can change the thickness of the sample at a smaller rate than we currently are. I am excited for what is coming and I can see good progress every week.
As far as me doing anything exciting this week, there were a couple of things. The barbeque at the Dylla’s was full of good food and good conversation. I was able to spend more time with the interns and meet more people that work at AIP. On Friday the other interns came to NIST and it was fun to see what else happens there besides the projects in my division. Also, it was nice to be able to show the interns where I work. I have high hopes for a good week ahead and will be waiting to fill everyone in on my progress.

Week 4

This week wasn’t filled with much. I really didn’t do a lot of work if anything. For the first few days I was trying to figure out how to solve for the optical reflection coefficient (R). That took a little bit of time searching different websites. I found multiple equations that were all derivatives of the each other. I kept getting wrong answers. It wasn’t until Thursday that we figured out that Microsoft Excel uses radians and not degrees and I had entered the angles in degrees and not in radians. I felt pretty blonde at that point but don’t we all at one point or another in our lives. Now back to earlier in the week, on Tuesday I was told that I was done working on the solar cell project because I had accomplished with what I needed to do by finding out the External Quantum Efficiency. Well it wasn’t until I got R correct that I was completely done. My advisor has been given money from NASA to work on a project. That is the new project that I am a part of. The new project is trying to optimize the index of refraction of a thin film of iron on top of silicon. I am going to change the thickness of the thin film by etching the pieces with phosphoric acid. The longer I leave the sample in the acid the thinner it will be. I have learned how to etch and use all the safety precautions. For the first time I have to wear a lab coat, protective eye wear, and protective gloves because I am dealing with an acid. To measure the thickness of the film I use an ellipsometer. I am excited for this project because I will have work to do that I can do by myself. I do not have to wait for my advisor to tell me everything to do. It will be a great experience and I am excited to be able to update everyone every week. That was this week at work.
As far as life in DC goes. I didn’t do much this week except go and see some memorials. I thought I had been to everything in DC as far as museums, monuments, and memorials. But, I hadn’t ever seen the FDR memorial. I think that is my favorite one now. Well he is my favorite president. It was fun to see and hang out with some of the other interns. I hope to do more next week to have a better update.