Holy Batballs Batman!

Surprisingly, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) isn’t as exciting as it might sound.  I know, I was shocked too.  A lot goes into SEM.  First, you have to coat your samples.  I’ve been coating mine with gold and palladium (not enough to get rich on though).  Then, you have to sit around while the vacuum chamber that your samples will be placed in vents (generally three whole minutes!), put the samples in, and pump it back down (another three minutes!).  After that you have to turn on the electron gun (cool) and align everything.  Just getting ready takes about twenty frickin minutes!

After all of that, you take pictures of your samples.  Here’s one I got yesterday of a silica nanosphere (ok, nanoball) array:

What Do “Good” Ag Colloids Look Like?

If you are my faithful reader, then you know that much (all?) of the research that happens here relies on “good” silver colloids. Last week I posted a prep that results in good Ag sols. But what do I mean by good? Well, they have to look good.