• Question: do people accept your methods? are they general or unusual?

    Asked by 559newp24 to Triona, Simone, Kieran, Julia, Hugh, Emily on 8 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Triona

      Triona answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      You work with people and find the best methods to do things. It is usually a compromise. I like to stay open to other peoples ideas and approaches and methods and share my approach with them. We will then work with the best method.
      I wouldn’t say my my methods are unusual. But I do tend to consider all aspects. I want it to be a very thorough method.

    • Photo: Hugh Manning

      Hugh Manning answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      Most of the times I use general, well established methods for testing or making the samples. Every once in a while I’ll try something really strange or unusual because I think it might have a small chance of working and producing some new amazing result.
      I once put a nanowire network sample into a microwave because I thought it might be a really quick and easy way process them and melt all the nanowires together to make make it perform better. It didn’t work.
      So I put the sample ontop of a piece of sapphire which is a susceptor material, this means its meant to absorb electromagnetic energy from the microwaves and convert it to heat, but that also didn’t work. Two quick experiments which if they worked could have gotten me some really nice results. But I just went back to using the established methods of heating the nanowire networks in an oven at 120 degrees celsius for 30 minutes.

      Working with new materials you kind of have to think outside of the box for new applications or ways to use those materials, if you just keep copying what everyone else is doing you’ll never discover anything truly unique, so it’s nice to do those kinds of experiments every once in a while, even though 99% of the time it wont work like you hoped.

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