Greetings from Changchun

Marc Desmulliez and David Watson visiting Chanchun, China

Marc and I are now safely back from braving temperatures of -25C, pretty chilly but not too bad with a decent pair of thermals, which have the added advantage of being exceptionally stylish. We were guests of Weixing Yu at the Changchun Institute of Optics,Fine Mechanies and Physics (or CIOMP, not a bad acronym but I think MISEC wins this battle of abbreviations...)
While there, Marc gave a few lectures about who MISEC are, what we do and why the iPhone is rubbish. It went down pretty well though as he's been invited back to present at a conference in June. I'm sure they'd appreciate other speaker submissions too so if you know anyone who uses lasers or optics in their work then get submitting, can't think of a single person at the moment but I've heard rumours of equipment such as lasers and UV-liga machines in the department so they must be used by someone...
While Marc was sleeping in his hotel room between lectures, I was slaving away trying to apply the direct writing process I'm working on to the equipment they have there. It's a cunning reworking of an AFM scanning probe tip and software that uses optical fibres to deliver a laser beam to the surface at (hopefully) sub micron linewidths. The advantage of this is that the optic can deliver light from less than 2µm above the substrate. It can probably get closer but I was being cautious.


I wasn't entirely successful in my experiments but did discover alternative chemical for use in my process which are potentially advantageous. If anyone else can think of a use for using an AFM tip to deliver light, then I'm sure they'd be interested too. Feel free to come and ask me questions about it for a bit more info.
To sign off, I leave you with a nugget of fascinating information:
Did you know that the "B" in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stands for 'Benoit B. Mandelbrot'?