It rained yesterday, so we did not have a lab picnic. Instead, Dr. Drndic took the lab group to a Japanese restaurant called Pod. The restaurant's atmosphere was cool and modern. The large tables in the "pod" rooms were surrounded by walls that changed fluorescent colors by pressing buttons. It was fun to see the fluorescent lights change from purple to blue to pink, etc. Pod also had tiny desserts that were cute and tasty - yum!

In the lab, I filed paperwork to be trained in the clean room and received another journal article on nanopores to read for my project. Adrien and I went to the Penn office to receive our IDs. Yay to being Penn ID official for the summer.

On Wednesdays, the NBIC hosts Brown Bag lunch discussions. Today's discussion focused on boolean/nested searches to find journal articles using Penn Engineering resources. 

In the afternoon, I went to the Singh Center to use Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) to capture images of phosphorene, buckyballs embedded in graphite membrane, and Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). I used SEM for my research at the Pitt Dental School to take images of organosilane coated magnesium disks and observe surface morphology. Of today's images, I found MoS2 the most interesting because it is a metal dichalcogendide. My research this summer focuses on the fabrication of the novel nanomaterial Tungsten Disulfide (WS2) for electronic transport. Although MoS2 and WS2 are in the same group, we expect to see differences in signal characteristics: frequency of events, device noise, etc. 

Buckyball C60 Graphine

MoS2

Phosphorine

Cleanroom safety training tomorrow! Can't wait to wear my clean (radiation) suit; I've always thought Marty McFly's looked pretty awesome in Back to the Future!