Hello, This week has been really enjoyable for me it has been challenging knowledge wise but the results in the lab have paid off, this week the lab was laid off to 2 pm the entire week since the glove box needed regeneration and it takes 18 hours for it, and lastly, we are doing a new lithium copper cell using Nafion due to its conductivity and we are finishing the project next week.
On Monday we did some Lithium copper cells of AlF3 and the glove box, the past week we did the solution and assembling of the copper with the reactant, but on Monday I assembled them into cells. It was a great experience since my mentor Taehee had more trust in my lab partner Arthur and me so we did everything without being monitored all the time and we used the knowledge of the previous weeks to assemble the lithium copper cells, assembling a cells takes about ten steps that need to be taken really prices since using the wrong tool or not centering everything cool make the cell have zero electro conductivity meaning it won’t work when charged.
On Tuesday the glove box went into regeneration since it was an urge to do it if not it will malfunction and the argon gas could be damaged, because of that we had a free day, however, we had a seminar in the afternoon from 4 pm to 6 pm about crystals and then I basically finished some essays and read a book.
Wednesday was an interesting day, I arrived at 10:oo am then our mentor was doing, some kind of experiment on his own, I believe it is a sealed to a container in which you can add solid chemicals and put them into the glove box, well after our mentor finished showing us the procedure of how to take that container and put it out of the glove box, we went to a seminar about lithium cells but the difference on this compared on what I am doing is that they are specialized in the solid electrolyte, this is because the liquid electrolyte is really flammable and they are trying new ways to create electrolytes without causing damages in battery and provoking explosions and we basically had a 2hour class learning on the conductivity and it advantages between each material and we saw all of the different aspects of them, personally it was extremely hard I just understand part of it, but the class is made for under graduate students and graduate students of chemical engineering, it was a great experience and I think we are going to a couple more next week, after the class, we went back to the lab and our mentor proposed a new experiment with nafion as our solution, since it has great electro conductivity with lithium but, its something that it hasn’t been tried yet so its a new thing at all only using nafion.
On Thursday we did some solutions of 2.5% of PVDF and NMP because we were running out of it, and then we placed some NAFION into a stirring machine at 60 degrees celsius at max speed, however, it takes 2 hours stirring at 60 degrees celsius and then you need to place It 8 hours in an oven at 80 degrees celsius and because of that we left and we did all of the processes Friday.
Friday was a busy day I applied for a seminar for a company named Illumina at 4 pm and our mentor scheduled the lab at 2 pm so we had not that much time to finish, well on Friday we did everything, Taehee told us what he wanted to do and he made us do it without supervision, first, we did a solution with the solid Nafion that creates lithium when solidifying and we mixed it with NMP to create a 2.5% solution, after making it I placed it into the starring machine for 10 mins until its fully homogeneous, then we used copper foil and used a different amount of solution depending on the doctor blade thickness we used we used 5, 10, and 15. The last thing we did was place the samples into the vacuum oven overnight so the substance becomes homogenous with the copper, however, we noticed that it was taking quite a bit to become homogenous and it’s a concern we have for next week. For Illumina, we were given a small seminar and the people told us how to get into the scientific marketplace and all of the aspects you take to become an actual chemist and work with pathogens and analysis, they gave us good advice on how much education you need for certain jobs and how you can apply to become an intern and then get a job on their company.
Saturday I went to a museum that was an actual Vietnam aircraft, in downtown San Diego it was really cool a lot of great stories and it was a new experience for sure.
There are no comments published yet.