PhD Project

My PhD project was an interesting one for someone so interested in astronomy as I am. It was the very opposite of observing the sky! At the time of my PhD studies, it was not possible for me to undertake an astronomy project for my thesis. There was no-one available to be my supervisor. So one of the professors at the university offered me a project in surface physics, involving using a scanning tunnelling microscope to study the adsorption of aurocyanide onto carbon. An earlier PhD student of his had made some interesting discoveries about this process and it would be my job to extend his work and see what else could be discovered. Basicly I would be using an STM to image individual atoms (or at least, the electron cloud) and try to decipher how they were interacting. A far cry from imaging the sky! It became quite a standing joke around the physics department..... imaging atoms by day and galaxies by night!!!!!!! One of the things I love about science......... the wonderful things the toys we have let you explore!

What follows below is a simplified and shortened version of my PhD thesis. For simplicity and for downloading convenience, I have separated each chapter into its own WORD document, accessed by each link below. Also for simplicity, I have not included any references.

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 Theoretical Background

Chapter 3 Equipment and Methods

Chapter 4 Results and Analysis

Chapter 5 Discussion

Chapter 6 Conclusions