Day 17

On this day, my internship is closed due to excessive snow.

Day 16

I spent most of the day doing some write-ups on various medications that we are considering for usage with the wafers. This is exciting because it means we're now at the stage when we can actually load up the hydrogels with drugs and directly address a medical application. I closely examined three different specific medications and read many papers to learn about previous studies involving these compounds. In particular, I focused on the effectiveness and versatility of the drugs, keeping in mind that I needed to find something that would benefit from being released due to a change in pH.

Afterwards, I created some more prime layers under the new (time-consuming) synthesis and went to use the ellipsometer in order to measure the thicknesses of the different wafers following that procedure. Unfortunately, the ellipsometer was malfunctioning once again, and my various efforts to diagnose the problem were to no avail.

A little while later, I tried restarting the ellipsometer and, amazingly, it began working.

Day 15

On this day, my internship was still closed because of the holidays, so I came to school again and worked under Dr. Kim in the nanotechnology lab. I read various papers to help figure out my next step with my research project, helped other people gain access to papers from scientific journals, and discussed the results of my microscopy imaging with Dr. Kim.

Day 14

On this day, I did not have internship because it was closed due to a combination of Finals Week and the holidays. Instead, I came to school and worked with Dr. Kim.

I had a paper for a research competition due very soon, so I spent the day writing and revising my work. In the afternoon, I stopped by the microscopy lab to prepare a sample for imaging in the hopes that the images I would take later could be used in my paper.

By the end of the day, I had finished my fourth draft of the paper and felt pretty good about the work I had done.

Day 13

It was a relatively slow day in the lab because some of the equipment was malfunctioning, which prevented me from carrying out the work I would typically do. Instead of getting to learn how to use the spin coater, which is something I had been looking forward to, I helped out with some contact angle measurements.

This entails first adjusting the pH of various solutions to ensure that they're sufficiently calibrated for usage with the machine. In total, I had to adjust three solutions with the brand-new (well, new to being used, as its off-color and dirt-crusted appearance suggested quite some time has passed since its retail days) pH meter. One solution in particular was frustrating to adjust because it kept bouncing a little too low and then a little too high, but I eventually got it.

Then I brought these solutions over to the contact angle machine. I have seen this used before and have helped a little bit with it in the past, but for the first time I was able to operate it alone, which was fun. I measured the contact angles of droplets under varying pH levels on the surfaces of the wafers, making sure to measure them both increasing in pH and decreasing.

After that, I helped out with general lab affairs, such as cleaning an enormous quantity of glassware.

Day 12

On this day, I was absent from internship due to a research conference that I attended in Boston.