Two birds with One Stone

Having trouble getting responses for the last couple of days.  Have been working on getting 50 nm spheres to create more continuous layers on the silica by changing the solvent ratios some more but to the naked eye there doesn't seem to be any apparent improvement in sample coverage overall.  This does not mean that it is not improving on a micro scale, just that I will need to use an SEM to tell.  This is in the mean time while I have been waiting to hear back from contacts who are graciously helping us with creating the channels (trough) for the other half of the project.  So far though I have not been able to get responses from them or the people who are helping us with the etching to create nanopillars either.  It is a difficult thing to try and schedule something else into an already packed summer for them I'm sure, but it makes me nervous because I don't want to get to a point where I've got more to accomplish than time to do it all.  

As already mentioned the plan is for the troughs to be fabricated in PMMA using e-beam lithography which the group who have been contacted to help us are adept at.  I'm excited to start this because it appears that this technique will be more precise and require less leg work to get a sample ready for surfactant trials.  Once I've gotten to a place where I can get nanopillars done it will essentially be the same deal, where to create a new sample I already have a protocol done, but this is the part where I have to perfect the protocol, and that's where the bulk of the work has gone so far.  As a added benefit from this though I have increased my knowledge of the substrate and its properties, which means that creating this sample will have served a dual purpose, which I look at as an accomplishment.