NOVEMBER 1998 REPORT FOR

W. CHARLES SYMONS, III

On October 7th, I successfully completed the oral portion of my Ph.D. qualifying examination. As part of this exam, a presentation summarizing my research topic was given and can be viewed by clicking on the linked figure below.

Figure 1: Ph.D. Dissertation Proposal Presentation.

With the completion of my qualifying exam, more time was spent in the lab. Specifically, extra time was spent trying to perfect the NSOM probe fabrication technique being utilized. It was discovered that a high weight in conjunction with high heat applied to the relatively short tube through which the fiber is threaded, will result in very small probe diameters. In fact, the best probe tips cannot be seen under the highest magnification of the traditional optical microscope. In this manner, it is believed that SEM characterization of these probes will reveal that they can serve a dual purpose. In other words, once coated and cut to an appropriate length, the new probes should be able to be used as thin wire samples. In this manner, a thorough comparison can be made to previous computational results.