Nano Stream

FRI

Freshmen in the Nano Stream are currently working on the synthesis and catalytic evaluation of dendrimer encapsulated nanoparticles (DENs). In recent years, the synthesis of nanoparticles ranging in size of 1-100 nm has attracted a great deal of interest because they typically exhibit properties that differ from bulk materials of the same composition. These particles are of particular interest in the field of catalysis, as catalytic performance is inherently associated with material properties manifested on the nanoscopic length scale. Catalysts are very important to many technological processes including energy production, energy conversion, environmental remediation, pollution abatement, and specialty chemical production. One important aspect is to develop new synthetic methods that will allow for the rational design of more efficient catalysts of controlled size and composition. Equally important is the investigation of structure-function relationships of these nanoparticles, particularly the evaluation of these DENs' catalytic activity.

Nano Stream students use the laboratory skills they've learned during the spring semester to synthesize and characterize a wide array of monometallic DENs, such as Au, Ag, Pt, Pd, Cu, and a variety of bimetallic ones.
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Through the research process, our stream aims to train and educate students with hands on experience in the following areas of research:

  • Literature search:  students in our stream are fully trained to use advanced literature database search engine, such as Web of Sciences, and SciFinder Scholar.  In the Spring semester with incoming freshmen we start off the semester by assigning literature search topics to help the students understand the background of our research topic.  At the end of the semester, when we come to the final project, they are encouraged to go back and look at what they did at the beginning in the literature search to fully understand the purpose of the exercise.
  • Reading journal papers:  students are expected to read and to understand a good number of peer-reviewed journal articles in order to come up and to modify their own synthesis procedures. 
  • Wet-chemistry techniques, e.g.: operating balances, making analytical solutions, titration, dilution, pipetting, adjusting pH of solution, vacuum filtration, etc. 
  • Training on advanced instrumental techniques includes: UV-Vis spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS), and gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS).  We put several freshmen students through TEM training each year to make them experts on acquiring images with this million dollar instrument on campus. 
  • Basic research skills:  keeping lab notebook, computer data processing (spreadsheet softwares, e.g. Excel, Origin), collaborating with fellow research students (sharing equipments, etc), good lab citizenship, basic lab safety practices, communicating scientific ideas through data presentations, experimental design, optimization, and data analysis.  Students submit several computer-generated partial or full reports and receive detailed feedbacks on them to improve their writing. 

Nano Particles