Over a two year period, I developed a user friendly program for entering
"recipes" for MBE (molecular beam epitaxy) growth.
The growth instructions, or recipe, would be entered via a PC computer,
instead of using a more complicated and smaller touch pad on the
hardware. A "windows-like" color environment was developed and implemented
from scratch, which allowed the user to set temperatures, shutters, mass
flow values, and times for a variety of materials. Error checking was
performed to ensure that invalid or dangerous settings were not made.
Once completed, the recipe could be stored on disk or sent (via an RS-232)
cable to the hardware, which handled the actual growth and control of the
MBE machine, owned and operated by Dr. Charles W. Tu of the
Electrical
and Computer Engineering Department, UCSD. The program was written in
Borland Turbo Pascal and was over
1000 lines in length. Results and usefulness of this program was presented
at the UC San Diego Undergraduate Research Conference in June of 1992.
Back to Cliff's Research Experience.
