Everything is going so quickly this week! We mailed a shipment of the wafers with WS2 membranes to our partner university on Monday afternoon. I have performed SEM with the WS2, used piranha solution to remove dust from the wafers, and become certified to use the Mask Alignment (MA6) for wafer/lithography patterning. 

I have also been working on reading relevant journal articles and writing a literature/background review. The background review is the second assignment I have as part of my REU program; during week 1 I wrote a project summary describing a bit about my project background, the work I will be doing, and its importance. 

In unrelated news, I'm having a great time exploring with Connie during lunch time. The Singh Center (where I conduct my research in the clean room) has a very nice rooftop garden. 

Two especially fun (outside the lab) events have occurred so far this week. Monday was Connie's 21st birthday. To celebrate, we went to Max Brenner's. It is a restaurant that specializes in food and chocolate inspired masterpieces. Yay Connie - Happy Birthday! I guess this was my second B'Day celebration in a week (91st party last Saturday). 

The second event was attending the BIO International Convention's Johnson and Johnson sponsored party at the Reading Terminal last night. The BIO International Convention booked the Reading Terminal for the night and had live music and a plentiful food samplings selection from each vendor. I had a free access pass and shared the access code with my REU group. It was a great time! 

Uncle Paul came to visit today and we enjoyed lunch at the Shake Shack.  He is also coming to see this week's Penn lecture which is on the topic of new nanotechnologies; should be fun.