What we did last week...

...was that we prepared our SAM layers using a more rigorous procedure than we used before. We cleaned the chips in piranha for 5 minutes instead of a couple of seconds, and increased the amount of purging when loading MUA in a vial in the "glove box". We also purged the jars with the chips in MUA solutions for 10 minutes as opposed to 3-5 minutes. As a result, when we inspected our chips with the FTIR we were able to see the absorption peaks corresponding to MUA's vibrational modes. At the same time, the thickness measurements were inconclusive. It appeared that we needed to explore deeper fitting the thickness of a layer and its optical constants. This week taught me that a true researcher should always look for a way to improve experimental procedures and not be afraid to start all over if the existing procedure proves to be ineffective.