I started working in the Engle Lab at scripps research, under Keary Engle and my mentor Madison Wagner. The aim of the lab to create solutions that will catalyise different chemicals easiest and most efficiently. My mentor’s project is focusing on creating tetra-aryl-alkyne groups that are the most luminescent under UV light and also are efficiently made. The end product are compunds that could be used in the next generation of OLED screens to reduce electricity consumption.
During my first week I learned that everyone in the lab is focusing on a different possible way to create these compounds and any one of them could be the final goal. The reactions I am conducting start by finding 3-5 compounds that we have not tried yet and mixing them with a substrate, an amino acid, and our catalyst which is palladium.
e done in the lab so far, one is called a prep plate and the other is a column. The prep plate starts by dotting a compacted silica plate with the compound mixed with a solvent and leaving it in a bath of hexanes and 5% dichloromethane. After about an hour, the capillary action of the hexanes will push the tetra alkynes to a band up the plate so that
Once the powder is separated, once again wash with chloroform and you can put it into the NMR machine to analyze the purity. The final pure solution should glow depending on the starting compund we used. This one glowed a neon blue.
Excellent start to a very interesting internship! The lab work sounds fascinating and the beach time is awesome. Hope the stingray sting healed up ok.