October 17, 2008 – 3:53 pm
The society formerly known as the American Vacuum Society (AVS) is holding their international conference in Boston, MA next week! And I’ll be there! [Exciting!] If you are going to be there, drop me a line on the blog and we can snag a coffee or beer together.
The programs and cards sent out may have a familiar image! 
My AFM image of the CuInSe2 Bicrystals I grow in our lab won second place in the Art-Zone competition last year! It was great fun! [Thanks goes to AVS for being a fantastic organization!]
Wish me luck with my talk!!
August 27, 2008 – 12:19 am
Those of you who know the Rockett group well, have likely seen this video. It’s completely hilarious. Anyone who’s ever been in Graduate School will love it…
I could not decide exactly how to post this… searching high and low, I couldn’t find the answer to my problem. I felt, in the very least, it needed to be posted here. So, I’ve decided to focus on the problem only. Then, in a future post, I’ll describe in more detail how I go about doing my research writing using LaTeX [wikipedia]. So, my basic comment is: I write in LaTeX, BibTeX, etc., and the following will help only a few people doing the same, and doesn’t actually offer a solution right now. [Boy, aren't I helpful?] (click through to read more…)
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Well, I’m finally published in my current field. It took a very very long time to get this paper published. All sorts of reasons for the delay. In fact, this work was originally started in 2004 (our first bicrystal was successfully grown in ‘04). During research group meeting, I made an under the breath comment something akin to: “Well, darnit, it’s too bad we can’t study a single grain-boundary, because then everything would be so much easier…” Prof. Rockett looked over to me and smiled: “But, Allen, we can study a single grain-boundary! That’s a great idea!” So, the bicrystal project was started.
We were able to obtain a bicrystal GaAs wafer from Wafer Technology Limited Co. (UK); I requested a bad growth, with crystallites as large as possible. I’ll be forever indebted to the great guys at Wafer Technology for their quick grasp of what I was looking for. After visiting our group in 2006, S. Seibentritt at HMI (now at Lüxenbourg) started similar work.
While this current paper isn’t perfect, it went through numerous revisions. Most of the extensive EBSD calculations didn’t make the paper. Subsequent papers will likely revisit the disorientation discussion.
Unfortunately, there was an error we missed in the proof. The paper is currently missing Figure 2(c): The cross-sectional HRTEM image (the hard work of C. Lei). The image can be found here: Cross-Sectional HREM image of Cu(In,Ga)Se2 bicrystal, hosted at Prof. Angus Rockett’s research group’s webpage.
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