every night I drench my bed, I melt my couch in tears.

@Tastyfrzz Umm I studied Electrical and Electronics Engineering in my Bachelors, and Nanotechnology in my Masters.

@nobodyishome Impressive! Are you working in those areas now? Making any grey goo yet?

@Tastyfrzz I worked as a scientist for 4 years, at a research institute. Sort of an amalgamation of everything I learnt :) Now, I'm trying to get a Doctorate.

@nobodyishome ultimately you want to teach? What is your thesis? I used to review them for a chinese student for grammar and spelling.

@Tastyfrzz Study of multilayers and their application as CMOS compatible selective emitters for thermohphotovoltaic systems. A bit of nanotechnology and a bit of what I learnt in my bachelors.

@nobodyishome Will you be doing any environmental cycle testing with temperature and humidity or vibration? Would be nice to know how rugged they are and if encapsulation is required or if they delaminate or crack.
How do you connect to them? Wire bonding or ball bonding?
Optimum substrate? Silicon wafer or low thermal expansion CTE glass like Schott borosilicate?

@Tastyfrzz Silicon wafer. And it's just using really thin layers to make something called selective emitters to make heat radiation more compatible with a particular photovoltaic cell. I studied Si, Ge, GaAs.

@nobodyishome heavy doped like a PEARL cell. Front and back contacts?
For lidar we were using 1550 nm.

@Tastyfrzz I don't know. What I designed and made was a thin film. Al-silica mulitilayers on silicon.

@nobodyishome i was making dielectric lidar galvo mirror surfaces with an ibad using a silicon wafer substrate or superflat electroless nickel plated rapid prototyped ceramic-like plastic components or schott glass blanks from Rayotek in San Diego, or 25 mil thick soda lime glass hard drive disk substrates. We'd put a strike on the surface then 1nm of aluminum a few angstroms of Ta2O5, then alternating thin layers of SiO2 and TiO2 to make a dielectric mirror. It worked great. Even got the rapid prototypes one to work but it was really tricky as the surface had to be free of strut attachments. First time it came out green then readjusted the thickness of layers and got purple, then cotton candy pink, and finally fully reflective.

@Tastyfrzz I understand nothing.