Everything must go!

We're sitting down in the office on Thursday having lunch when Jim comes down to tell us that the Materials Research Lab (MRL) has decided to close down the Epicenter -- in a month. Now, as you may or may not know, our group specializes in a process called Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) whereby materials are literally custom built atomic layer by atomic layer within an ultra high vacuum (UHV) chamber. And most of the MBE machines that our group uses are located in the MRL's Epicenter. We're basically the only group that actually uses any of the equipment in the Epicenter, and we are the only ones who use 'our' growth chambers.

The upside is that Jim says the MRL is going to give us just about any equipment from the center that we want. The downside is that we'll need to move and set up the equipment in the labroom that we've been using as our office space. A room that is most decidedly not set up as a clean environment like the Epicenter is.

It'll be nice to have the equipment be closer and be officially ours, and I'm looking forward to being involved in the tear-down and setup -- there really is no better way to learn exactly how it all works. But we'll basically be all but shut down for the next three months. What a way for Jim to spend his semester research sabbatical, huh?

-Tim