6/15/2007

dude, where's my carbon?

Well, I mentioned in my last post that I wasn't doing synthesis, but that doesn't mean I'm not working on exciting new things. Right now, those exciting new things happen to involve a lot of device fabrication. Here's a little something I made last week:




Only one component of this little guy contains my favorite element. Everything else pretty much falls into the "icky metal" (or otherwise inorganic) category. Can you guess where the carbon is? Bonus points if you can guess what the nanopopsicle is actually designed to do.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

my question is where'd you get a nanometer ruler??

Ψ*Ψ said...

um, I didn't? it's in centimeters...

Anonymous said...

It looks a lot like a stingray - but it's made from snot!

Excimer said...

It's goo on a fucking stick, people. Goo on a stick. Coincidentally, that's how I like my goo: on a stick.

Anonymous said...

You look pretty cross on your blogger picture as well...

I don't know if you herd of this Roman emperor dude but he is pretty awesome:

"Put yourself in mind, every morning, that before that night you will meet with some meddlesome, ungrateful and abusive fellow, with some envious or unsociable churl. Remember that their perversity proceeds from ignorance of good and evil; and that since it has fallen to my share to understand the natural beauty of a good action and the deformity of an ill one; since I am satisfied that the disobliging person is of kin to me, our minds being both extracted from the Deity; since no man can do me a real injury because no man can force me to misbehave myself; I cannot therefore hate or be angry with one of my own nature and family"

Felix said...

reading Roman literature in English is for losers ;B

Robin St. John said...

Is it some sort of photodetector?

Ψ*Ψ said...

Close! I guess it's actually only part of a device, if you want to get technical. It needs to be immersed in electrolyte solution with another electrode in order to actually function.

Robin St. John said...

So it is an electrode- is the little dot thing a sensor, photo or otherwise?

Electrochemistry rules. It keeps a roof over my head, anyways...

Ψ*Ψ said...

I suppose you could call it that. Light in, current out? Doesn't exactly do anything useful, we're just using it to test something else.

MJenks said...

Felix:

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

Anonymous said...

The eye of the stingray is where you are searching for the truth, about photo-induced charge transport from your polyaromatics layer onto the plate support. That's where the wire comes in. Improving the efficiency of photovoltaics is what you are after, Jes.

Anonymous said...

clearly guys, it's one of these bio-nano-stem-cells i've heard so much about in the news. Probably about to used to fight terror or something...

PS. when you use that much glue, the device is a gluepopsicle that has nano on it, rather than the other way round.

Ψ*Ψ said...

Yeah, yeah. I had to post something.

Anonymous said...

Please don't despair about getting teased - for these are done onto you in a good mean spirit of the ogreness/
Anyway, what does this thing do?