This week was particularly challenging as I did not have power for seven days, but I still tried to help as much as possible in the lab. We encountered a significant issue with our experiment. The X-ray diffraction results revealed a negative pattern in all our synthesized modified MOF material. The results indicated that the porous structure of the molecules was filled with the ligands added during the modification step, highlighting an error in the washing process that reduced the absorption of the REEs from water. Further research showed that the color of our MOF material was supposed to be dark green, but we were getting pale green molecules. As a result, we decided to change our experimental design from the beginning. Instead of washing our MOF material three times with water, DMF, and ethanol at room temperature, we decided to rinse it with only ethanol at 100°C for 20 hours in the autoclave. The increased temperature seems to be the solution to our negative results. The resulting MOF material is darker in color, and although we have not tested it yet, we believe it might yield better results. We will find out next week.