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Making RHEED Block

Making RHEED Block

  • Materials:

    • In-Bonded Substrate Holder for 3 Gen II System (the block itself)

    • dropped but clean In source material (in fridge in batcave)

    • RHEED block making tools (In contaminated tweezers in foil packet in UHV clean toolbox in batcave)

    • hotplate

    • clean foil

    • 1.5x1.5 cm GaAs piece

    • UHV clean foil and kimwipe pouch

 

  1. Put clean foil down on hotplate and place block on foil

  2. Use tweezers to pull off a piece of In from ingot and put blob in center of block

  3. Heat to ~270C (In melting point is ~150 C but the block doesn’t fully contact the hotplate so I had to go higher)

  4. In should start softening/melting, can confirm by putting a smidgen on In on the foil itself and it should just melt

  5. Put GaAs piece on the In blob on the block and it should melt and settle down

  6. Use plastic tweezers to push on two corners at a time of the GaAs piece to get rid of air bubbles and make sure it’s level and centered on the block.

  7. When satisfied, start cooling the hotplate and use ultra-clean razor blade to scrape off any excess In that squeezed out from under the GaAs and wipe off on clean foil

  8. When cool, put new RHEED block in foil/kimwipe pouch.