Jisca 6-17-15

        Today, I started to do more of what I did last summer.  I made octadecylphosphonic acid using tetrahydrofuren as the solvent yesterday.  I then did my 1 hour deposition of cobalt in the acid that I made and put the cobalt coupons in the oven overnight.  Today, I checked in the IR to see if my monolayers formed on the 3 cobalt coupons that I did the deposition on.  It turned out that the self assembled monolayers only formed on 2 of the cobalt coupons.  To make sure that the monolayers will remain stable, I rinsed the cobalt coupons in tetrahydrofuren.  If the monolayers get removed throughout this rinse, it would mean that 1 hour is not enough to have stable monolayers.  I put the cobalt coupons in the oven for the night.
        Tomorrow, I plan to use the IR to see if the monolayers on the cobalt coupons stayed on or disappeared.  I will then use the sonicator to sonicate the cobalt coupons in tetrahydrofuren to see further in the stability of the monolayers.