I have crystals!

I started this week in Professor Abrahams’s lab!

On Monday, I met with Tim, the postdoc who is watching over me and Marcus. Marcus is the other student who was assigned to Abrahams’s group. His project is somewhat similar to mine, but he is working more with what look like molecular cages as opposed to interpenetrating sheets. His project revolves around sticking ions in these cages, more specifically cesium. We didn’t do much in lab, so I just spent the time looking over the relevant literature and the syntheses that were relevant to my project. I did receive a super fancy lab notebook! I’ve never seen anything like it! It has a really nice bound hard cover and the inside is very structured and organized. I miss my plain notebook a bit since I’m used to organizing my notebook in a specific way, but this was very impressive.

 On Tuesday, I went into lab to set up two reactions. Essentially, I combined the copper salt with our ligand and another reagent and left this to recrystallize overnight. I had two batches that I had set up, both of which were really pretty! Today I checked my vials and had crystals! Since my class schedule is very busy, I didn’t have time to do anything else. However, tomorrow I’m planning on making more of the ligand and eventually characterize the crystals I have.

The left vial holds the ligand that is used in combination with the copper salt to form the crystals in the two right vials. The blue crystals I will characterize later are on the sides. At the bottom is and orange and blue precipitate.

I did get to look at these tiny crystals through a light microscope, which was very cool! It's amazing to see the structure up close! I'll keep you updated!

I'd like to thank the OSA Foundation for their support, I'm very grateful for having the opportunity to do this work and be in lab.

Stephanie