Jun 29th AM

Today, we prepare the cantilevers to measure adhesion of cantilever tip on diamond nanocrystals. We have to clean the cantilevers with a machine called the plasma cleaner. The cantilevers are placed on a glass dish and put into the machine. A partial vacuum was created and O2 was pumped into machine. The O2 becomes plasma which is blasted onto the cantilever to remove any organic matter. The cleaned cantilever was mounted on the AFM and a control adhesion baseline was measured using a clean glass-slide. A diamond layer about 800 nm thick will be put onto a glass-slide to measure the adhesive force between cantilever tip and diamond layer. Diamond layer make a very smooth surface for studying cell adhesion. Diamond consists of C atoms and the top layer of C could be replaced with H atoms which makes the top layer hydrophobic to water. Replacing the top layer of C with O atoms will make the top layer hydrophillic.