The title of this blog post comes from a quote from Timothy Ferris.
I went to Jairo's lab today to get acquainted with the work that he's doing. I also brought two paintings that I had created to repurpose from some images that I got in from his website. (I process images in a laser jet printer/scanner and transfer them into my paintings.)
I'll try to summarize what I discovered, and Jairo can comment if I got anything wrong, or wants to add something.
He was able to show me the scanning tunneling electron microscope, which is quite extraordinary a piece of equipment. It took immense labors to set up and calibrate.
A sample of graphene is prepared and placed inside.
The scanning tunneling electron microscope has a electrical probe that can be held at a controlled distance above the sample with a voltage that causes electrons to tunnel through in such a way that you can actually map the probability for its energy levels determined by the electron's actual wave function across the material. They need ultra cold temperatures to prevent random jittering when they take the measurements.
Remarkably, everyday prosaic scotch magic tape is actually used to separate layers of graphite to produce graphene. Like painting, they are using transfer techniques of their own to get the samples on a plate. Graphene is one atom thick. The tape can pull off parts 1, 2, 3, ... etc. atoms thick.
Here's a rather nice diagram of preparing samples.
Jairo looking cool. Or perhaps I should say ultra cold. They use a lot of liquid nitrogen and helium.
impressive detail, this equipment looks very complex
Here's the paintings I brought with me:
Ed, these pieces are gorgeous. I can't wait to talk to you about their meaning.