Having finished charting the growth regime of my original sample, I now turned to creating the same kind of sample again to see if the growth regime is replicated. This meant essentially repeating the same long process I suffered through the previous two weeks, i.e. taking care of the silicon wafers, preparing many solutions as they were in dire need of replenishment (and making some extra too because I was in a good and charitable mood), and going through the arduous task of depositing bilayers through the same layer-by-layer assembly method.
Since I didn't have any extra random samples to play around with, that meant that there was a lot of waiting time. For the first time, I was actually excited to use the ellipsometer to take measurements because it meant I didn't have to stand over my samples, staring at invisible layers forming (this is, essentially, the scientific equivalent of watching grass grow, except you can't even see the grass.) I also became an expert at adjusting the pH of stock solutions without having to spend a laborious hour watching the pH tortuously swing from 5.45 to 5.55 and back again over and over until it finally hits the magic 5.50.
For the first time, however, I started to feel really independent in terms of the work I was doing, or at least I was under the impression I had developed some degree of competency - always a good thing. I no longer needed to ask ten times in a row where the methanol is kept, nor did I need help interpreting the Russian labels on all the bottles (apparently labeling things in the language of the country you are in is unheard of.) I even grew used to the multilingual environment around me - an environment, I might add, that does not include English. But it was nice to be able to do things on my own, and that in itself made my 3rd day of internship a good one.
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