400 2 20 126 150

VICTORY

I hereby declare victory over the P-2000 Micropipette Puller! Remember these numbers, my friends!

400 2 20 126 150

Those are the Heat, Filament, Velocity, Delay and Pull values for the project I've been working on for two and a half weeks! I got to use a really great optical microscope for to look at the finished product, and let me tell you something; the old tips we used to use just look like crap compared to what we have now. Also, the old ones are really brittle, but the ones I made break far less often.

Next week, I'm gonna be able to put my tips under an SEM, or Scanning Electron Microscope. That'll give me a nano-scale image of the tip so we can see just how sharp it really is. I'll post images when I get them.

Now, I never really explained why we needed these super thin optical fibers. Well, they're going to go into what is called an NSOM, or Near-Field Scanning Optical Microscope. Its a type of microscope that uses laser light to excite the electrons on the surface of a sample, and uses that data for topographical information. The sharper our tips are, the better they act as a guide for the light waves to where we need to scan.

I don't know what they're gonna have me do next week. The NSOM isn't quite in working order yet,the SEM is broken and we're waiting for a technician to fix it, and my professor is in Switzerland for a conference. Maybe they'll let me play with the laser? I can make infrared marshmellows! Well, whatever I get to do will be exciting, and I'll kick ass at it, so no worries!