This week I joined onto my mentors one-on-one with his P.I. He mostly talked about the results he had and the concerns about his experiment. His P.I. suggested some adjustments like removing the vacuum that he had and to surround the COF with water on both sides. It was nice to see how critique can be applied to improve the experiment and clear confusion. His P.I. also told me that I’m going to switch the direction of my research question. Instead of looking at the diffusion rate of the PFOA into a COF, I’m going to studying the type of adsorption that happens when the PFOA is inside the COF. This is still inline withe the photodegradation of PFOA, as the COF is a heterogeneous catalyst. This means that PFOA has to stick to the surface of the catalyst in the reaction. The PFOA either physically adsorbs with the hydrophobic tail or chemically adsorbs the hydrophilic head. So I’ll be running experiment with different environments and seeing the effects. This is different from my earlier question as I was collecting quantitative data, but now I will be focusing on qualitative.  My mentor said that I could do both if I wanted  but to make things easier I can just do this. It’s also been cool trying to modify the 3D models of the COFs just so I have 1 pore in the center and adding all of the layers. Quantum ATK can be really fun to use, but I still need to understand it more.