Hi, I’m Logan, and I’m from Telluride, Colorado. Over the past month, I’ve been attending an internship in the chemistry department at the University of Houston.
This week was quite exciting, as the specialized electrolytic cell for our project was finally completed. With that being said, we still had to test the cell and when we did, there ended up being some issues regarding the imaging on the ellipsometer.
Imaging Ellipsometer w/ cell-attached
Though these issues should not take too long to resolve, and hopefully will be resolved by the end of next week, as it is my last week here. The purpose of this specialized cell is to be able to take ellipsometry measurements whilst the sample is under the presence of electrical current, though the glass attachment that seals the sample in is creating complications, as the laser cannot properly reflect back out from the cell.
Additionally, this week I got to try a new measuring technique called SFG, which stands for sum-frequency generation. This technique involves the user of two laser beams, one infrared, and one visible, that combine at a certain point and create a single new beam. SFG can measure both the vibrational frequencies of molecules and therefore their orientations.
SFG Setup
SFG Graphs
In my final week we will be focused on gathering data and analyzing it so that I can give a group presentation next Friday.
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