course overview
TRANSCRIPT
Course objectives
• Provide you with a firm grounding in at least 7 practical areas that will be of use in your PhD research.
• Understand how to synthesize ideas from the literature.
• Encourage you to work together collaboratively.
• Help develop your practical skills.• Have fun!
Course structure
• First two days: lectures on experimental techniques and statistical analysis.
• Remainder of the course: practical work using a range of experimental techniques.
• Two days set aside for you to write-up your results.
• Statistics workshop.
Course timetableTime Monday
12th JanTuesday13th Jan
Wednesday14th Jan
Thursday15th Jan
Friday16th Jan
Morning(09:00– 12:30)
Lectures1 Lectures3 Labrotationday1 Labrotationday2 Labrotationday3
Lunch(12:30– 13:30)Afternoon(13:30– 17:30)
Lectures2LiteratureAssignment 1
Lectures4LiteratureAssignment 2
Labrotationday1 Labrotationday2 Labrotationday3
Time Monday17th Jan
Tuesday18th Jan
Wednesday19th Jan
Thursday20th Jan
Friday21th Jan
Morning(09:00– 12:30)
PrivateStudyLabwrite-up
Labrotationday4 Labrotationday5 PrivateStudyLabwrite-up
Statisticsworkshop
Lunch(12:30– 13:30)Afternoon(13:30– 17:30)
PrivateStudyLabwrite-up
Labrotationday4 Labrotationday5 PrivateStudyLabwrite-up
Courseend
LecturesMonday 12th January
• 09:30 – 11:00: High-vacuum; techniques and instrumentation: Alastair Buckley
• 11:30 – 12:30: Optical microscopy and image analysis: Rob Masters
• 13:30 – 15:00: Statistical methods: Matt Mears
Tuesday 13th January
• 09:00 – 10:30: Atomic Force Microscopy: Jamie Hobbs • 11:00 – 12:30: UV-Vis optical spectroscopy: David Lidzey• 13:30 – 15:00: Raman spectroscopy: Mark Geoghegan
Assignments
• Today and tomorrow, there is a literature review assignment that must be completed by the end of each day. You have 90 minutes to do this.
• Log onto Web of Science (http://apps.webofknowledge.com/ ), and perform a literature search to identify two high-impact papers from the literature that have used one of the experimental-techniques discussed in the morning’s lectures.
• Write a brief summary of each paper you have chosen (not more than 250
words per paper), describing the main findings of the work, and discussing how the technique was used to that study the particular material system.
• Then compare how the techniques were used in the two papers, and identify similarities or differences in the experimental approaches (not more than 150 words).
Experimental lab rotations
• Raman Spectroscopy • UV-Vis spectroscopy• Optical and Atomic Force Microscopy• High vacuum system and residual
gas analysis • Thin film preparation and metrology• Statistics Workshop
Experimental Rotations• You will undertake the experiments in a
small group of three students. You are free to choose who you want to work with.
Rotationday1 Rotationday2 Rotationday3 Rotationday4 Rotationday5Group1 Experiment A Experiment E Experiment D Experiment C Experiment BGroup2 Experiment B Experiment A Experiment E Experiment D Experiment CGroup3 Experiment C Experiment B Experiment A Experiment E Experiment DGroup4 Experiment D Experiment C Experiment B Experiment A Experiment EGroup5 Experiment E Experiment D Experiment C Experiment B Experiment A
Lab Rotation assignments
• You and your group will each do 5 lab rotations.
• After the first 3 experiments, you get a ‘free-day’, where you should make formal write-up of one of the experiments undertaken.
• You then do a further 2 experiments. You then have to write a further one experiment.
Marking
• All work will be marked.• Literature assignments 1 and 2 each
carry 5 points (maximum).• Lab write-up 1 and 2 each carry 10
points maximum.
• Total mark / 30.
Video diary
• We would like you to make a short video about one of the experiments that you are working on. This should briefly describe the experiment and provide hints and tips for other students who will work on it.
• Please upload this onto MOLE.• This is not assessed.
Locations
• UV-Vis, Optical microscopy and Vacuum experiments located in the 3rd year lab.
• Thin-film deposition and metrology, and Raman experiment located in 2nd year lab.
• AFM experiment in lab C28 (to be supervised by Jonny Burns and Stephen Jackson.
• Computers available in second-year lab for write-ups and assignments.