Lab Book-- Summer 2010 Project: What will happen when we expose gold to Polonium – 210 which is an alpha emitter? Can we explain what happens to the surface atoms when they react with alpha particles? How large are the events? What is going on at the margin? The Big Picture or Wild and Crazy ideas: Can we use alpha particles to shave off one layer of atoms? Can alpha particle radiation be focused? – Could we target 1 part of a living cell and eliminate some part and not hurt the rest of the cell?

We looking at Gold-III that had been annealed and covered with octothiols by heating overnight in an oven. Then we irradiated it for different lengths of time. We were having a great deal of difficulty scanning. The tip was crashing all the time. These pictures are not very clear the tip needs to be changed. Streaky features usually cause 512 nm x 512 nm 125 nm x 125 nm

STM – gold on mica irradiated with Polonium-210 Because we were having so much trouble scanning, Becky suggested we ask Val to scan a sample with the AFM. This is when we discovered that we were not seeing craters – we were running into bolders on the surface. We speculated what could have caused this phenonmenon. AFM – gold on mica and irradiated with Polonium-210 which is an alpha emitter STM – gold on mica irradiated with Polonium-210

Try Graphite (allotrope of Carbon) to see if we can see event Try Graphite (allotrope of Carbon) to see if we can see event. Problems: ……………………………………. Carbon atoms are smaller than Gold atoms Events may happen below the surface layer of atoms. Graphite samples are expensive to waste so we bought 1 sample and make scanning samples from it

What’s Next Do a time study to see the optimum time of exposure to be able to see event Try to repeat the blob from AFM to try to explain what has caused these Verify the events are from alpha bombardment and not events from free radicals Interesting events What we didn’t expect to see Non events in the Carbon