Week #5 has been pretty good. It is hard to believe that I am halfway through my REU experience. I got to spend more time in the lab this week, and it has been great. Although my mentor and I had some struggles and setbacks, I think this week went pretty well. Research is going well, and I am starting to conduct experiments in the lab more independently than before. I am confident with my measurements and procedures in the lab.

I spent more time in the lab halfway through the week, since the first half I spent some time finalizing some CAD drawings/graphic designs for my presentation. I am genuinely excited to present my research to the rest of the REU students. My hopes are that I will try to convey the research I am currently working on and make it simple for the other REU students to understand.

This week I am resuming my work on the electrocatalyst solution I was working from last week. Since my mentor was out of the lab for the most part last week, she had left me a set of instructions on how to continue the synthesis process. I was officially by myself, and for the most part it was okay, and my mentor arrived back from her vacation Wednesday, so we just kept working our experiments.

Thursday came and the final step of my work was to pretreat the electrocatalyst solution. The instructions specified to place it inside an oven at 350 degrees Celsius. My mentor and I had the solution prepared inside a vial with a plastic cap. It didn’t occur to me what happens to plastic at high temperatures, given that the cap of the vial was made of plastic.

Long story short, the plastic cap of the vial melted due to the extreme heat, and it mixed with the electrocatalyst solution I spent a week synthesizing. Great. I had spent a week preparing it. Anyways, we laughed, and I knew how to create the electrocatalyst solution and I just re-did the whole synthesis all over again.

I was able to get some data on some of the graphite/nickel foam covered catalysts sheets on Friday. We did an analysis that is called XRD Analysis, that uses x-ray diffraction rays to measure the crystallinity of the electrocatalysts covered sheets. This was exciting since I was finally seeing data since we started experimenting on electrocatalysts and the other set of experiments I have done in the lab.

It was a good week. I am ecstatic to say that I am starting to collect more data, and hopefull in the next upcoming week, I will be able to see all the components put together and function to create hydrogen gas.

-Adrian