Day 11

Since my internship was closed due to Thanksgiving break, I stayed at school and continued to work on my poster for the research conference. At this point, I really just had the fine-tuning left to do so I added in some more pictures, made a graph with some software I've never used before, and put in sections like the conclusion and acknowledgements. By the time school ended (it was a half-day), I was more or less done with the poster and was able to have it printed at Staples that night.

Day 10

I went to school instead of internship due to an upcoming research conference, so I spent this day in the lab with Dr. Kim to work on my poster. I used a poster template made in PowerPoint to design the actual poster and spent a lot of time trying to make or find good graphics to use. I also had to look through all of my microscopy pictures to figure out which would be good to include with the poster, and wrote up captions for each figure. To my surprise, I was actually able to finish a large portion of the poster in just one day.

Day 9

I went to a lecture on using carbon nanomaterials for various energy applications. It was an interesting overview of the different uses and types of these materials, but I wanted to hear more about the speaker's specific research and findings because a lot of what he said was background-type information.

I spent a lot of the afternoon remaking a lot of solutions that the lab had run low on, and in the process, I had an interesting experience with HCl. After washing many, many beakers, I wanted to measure some of my samples from last time to see how they were doing after they were released, but the ellipsometer wasn't working. According to one of the graduate students there, the laser was tired and needed to rest, which apparently happens frequently and for unpredictable periods of time.

Instead of working with my samples for the rest of the day, I read a wide variety of papers. The lab also spontaneously sparked into a debate about the differences between disorders, diseases, and syndromes, which even Google was not helpful in resolving. After half an hour of this, I returned to studying the papers.

Day 8

On this day, the lecture was on quantum computing, which was something I was hesitant about attending because I didn't think I would understand anything in the presentation. Although I ended up not understanding much of the last third, to my surprise, Dr. Nevard has more or less given me a lot of prerequisite knowledge for comprehending the majority of the lecture.

After that, I came into the lab as usual and did a normal prime layer addition. The solutions weren't quite ready to use as they were, so I had to adjust their pH before I could start putting wafers in. Once I was done with the prime layers, I took them into the room with the ellipsometer and measured their thicknesses. Using the thickness data as well as the numbers from previous measurements, I used Excel to perform some calculations.

Day 7

The lecture on this day was about controlling malignant stem cells, specifically those present in tumors. Although some parts were difficult to understand due to the speaker's accent, I found this talk to be quite interesting as it presented some counterintuitive ideas. Even though my background in biology is not as strong as, say, chemistry, I was still able to understand the lecture and learn quite a bit from it as well.

In the lab, we started following a new procedure because the old one wasn't working to our satisfaction. We devoted a great deal of time to the pursuit of locating a particular key polymer necessary for this new procedure, including hunting down a woman from another lab group who was in possession of a small bottle of the material. Unfortunately, she was impossible to locate, but close study of our own chemical inventory revealed that somehow, we had this chemical in our stock -- something that shouldn't have been so surprising given that we have the most random, useless materials in our lab, including paint brushes and bottles labeled "potato".

After a rousing game of "Find That Chemical", I began the new procedure in earnest. The excitement did not last long, because many of the steps involved things like placing the wafer in the oven for an hour or so, which meant things proceeded very slowly. While I waited for the wafer to bake (so to speak), I occupied myself with my best friend, the ellipsometer.

Day 6

In the morning, I attended a lecture on magnetic field assembly of Janus and patchy particles which, despite its odd name, proved to be very interesting. The speaker essentially summarized her research on partially-coated particles produced via the method of deposition, although the intriguing part was how these particles reacted when introduced to a magnetic field versus an electric field. I was pleasantly surprised at how much of the lecture I understood even though it was aimed at graduate students; I had sufficient background for everything except the monstrously frightening physics portion.

Afterwards, I returned to normal lab life by going through the arduous process of preparing new prime layers on silicon wafers. Of all the chemicals and tools I worked with, of course I ended up injuring myself on tinfoil, an innocent household item. It wasn't a particularly serious wound, just a cut I sustained on my arm, but I now know to exercise caution around dangerous items like foil that are used for wrapping sandwiches, drying silicon wafers, and other such typical purposes.

Once I had recovered from this traumatic experience, I set to work adjusting the pH of approximately ten million solutions. This is necessary but mind-numbing work, and I was greatly relieved when the long, painful process was over and I could actually use those solutions to assist in contact angle measurements.

Up until this point, I hadn't used the ellipsometer, something quite rare for me on Wednesdays, but the reprieve did not last long, for at this point, the ellipsometer and I met again. The wafers I synthesized prime layers on earlier were ready to be taken from the oven and measured. Luckily, the ellipsometer was friendly and cooperative, and the computer didn't even crash on me when I was updating the Excel sheet with my new data.

Day 5

I attended a student research conference, which was a chance for those in a particular scholars' program, like the undergraduate I work with, to put their research on display via posters. The conference actually opened with a talk given by a woman who co-founded a relatively successful start-up, but although there were some interesting points made during her lecture, I found myself disagreeing with some of what she was saying, and as a whole, I didn't really like the way she presented herself. This is, of course, very subjective so this is just my opinion.

The rest of the conference was a good opportunity to look at different types of research being conducted since the posters varied in topic. Not all of them were chemistry -- there were a lot on computer science, for example, as well as physics research. I did notice that not a lot of people did biology work, which I suppose makes sense given the strengths and emphases of the school at hand.

Day 4

I was ill, and did not report to internship. I'm sure I was dearly missed.

Day 3

Having finished charting the growth regime of my original sample, I now turned to creating the same kind of sample again to see if the growth regime is replicated. This meant essentially repeating the same long process I suffered through the previous two weeks, i.e. taking care of the silicon wafers, preparing many solutions as they were in dire need of replenishment (and making some extra too because I was in a good and charitable mood), and going through the arduous task of depositing bilayers through the same layer-by-layer assembly method.

Since I didn't have any extra random samples to play around with, that meant that there was a lot of waiting time. For the first time, I was actually excited to use the ellipsometer to take measurements because it meant I didn't have to stand over my samples, staring at invisible layers  forming (this is, essentially, the scientific equivalent of watching grass grow, except you can't even see the grass.) I also became an expert at adjusting the pH of stock solutions without having to spend a laborious hour watching the pH tortuously swing from 5.45 to 5.55 and back again over and over until it finally hits the magic 5.50.

For the first time, however, I started to feel really independent in terms of the work I was doing, or at least I was under the impression I had developed some degree of competency - always a good thing. I no longer needed to ask ten times in a row where the methanol is kept, nor did I need help interpreting the Russian labels on all the bottles (apparently labeling things in the language of the country you are in is unheard of.) I even grew used to the multilingual environment around me - an environment, I might add, that does not include English. But it was nice to be able to do things on my own, and that in itself made my 3rd day of internship a good one.

Day 2

Yesterday, I continued working on the hydrogel layer-by-layer assembly system I had created last time by adding two bilayers, measuring the thickness, adding two more bilayers, and measuring the thickness again, all with the goal of being able to eventually chart the growth regime. Before I could actually add the bilayers, though, I had to replenish the necessary solutions and solvent mixes, which involved some fun times with a giant jug of methanol.

The actual addition of the bilayers is a somewhat annoying process because it entails rotating the silicon wafers throughout sectors of a petri dish and rinsing them off in between. In theory, each wafer should only be in each sector for exactly ten minutes because some grad student no longer there once told another grad student no longer there who then mentioned in passing to someone who informed the undergrad I work with who in turn told me that ten minutes is the ideal time. In practice, each wafer is there for anywhere between eight and eighteen minutes. One of the grad students did tell me, however, that in Russia they once had to make 24-bilayer wafers using this same method, so I was grateful that I only needed to add a total of 4 for now. 

During the waiting periods, I helped out with a lot of random tasks, like measuring thicknesses of another wafer system, playing with Excel sheets, and learning to use the contact angle machine. This last item was particularly cool for me because whenever I had done contact angle measurements at school, we used an especially unsophisticated method that involved magnifying the droplet and measuring, by hand, with a protractor. This machine was much cooler because a needle was used to precisely deposit the droplet and then the software measured the contact angle for you.

I then measured the thicknesses of my own wafers using the ellipsometer - this fickle piece of equipment and I are becoming fast friends, although I have to say it's a bit of a complicated love-hate relationship at times - and discovered that my data makes no sense. Things that should have grown chose to shrink, and vice versa, which means I'll have some more fun times attempting to figure out why this should happen in general and why this should happen to me, specifically.

Day 1

Today was my first day at internship, and I was surprised at how much work there is already and how fast time went. I'm working with an undergraduate student on a project concerning the deposition of a hydrogel over a prime layer (consisting of particular bilayers) on top of a silicon wafer, and specifically, I'll be studying the growth regime of one such system. Since today was my first day, I was led through some practice of creating these depositions for the system I'm working with and running measurements on them.

I started with the very beginning of the process - cleaning the wafers - and then ran through all the steps needed to coat them with the various polymers. Along the way, I remade a solution of phosphate buffer and stabilized the pH of various stock solutions; since the film on the wafer responds to pH, it's important that the levels are exactly where they should be. 

After I deposited the prime layer on the wafers, I was taught to use the ellipsometer to measure the resulting thickness. At first, I was utterly confused as to how to operate the machine, but going through the steps the approximately one million times needed to do all the measurements, I was basically doing it without even having to think about it. This piece of equipment is very old and fickle, so it only worked when it felt like it, leaving many of us in the lab disgruntled. 

Then I soaked the wafers in a certain acid and brought them over again to determine the new thicknesses. During the down time in this process, I worked on a set of wafers under a variation of my system and removed a particular polymer from their prime layers by exposing them to a higher pH. These also had to be measured in the ellipsometer.