This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number (EEC-2243923). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.
This week is the last. It almost feels impossible to see how fast time has gone. I am currently writing my blog post before heading out to the symposium. Throughout the week, all I did was practice with my fellow R-STEM REU peers. We pointed out each other’s weak points to ensure a good presentation. Besides that, I spent all the money left on my Rice ID at the Rice Coffee House. This REU made me start drinking coffee, I think I will take a break from it now because I feel like I am getting addicted to caffeine.
It was nice meeting all of you, and the lessons learned will surely be used throughout my life. I feel like this is the most I have grown as a student, and it was done in such a small amount of time. Lastly, I wish everyone successful college and professional careers, I am sure you will all thrive.
The speed at which this REU has passed by is incredible. With all of my experiments done, I was left to finalize some calculations. After that, the entire week was spent on finishing my poster. My mentor has guided me and helped me fix my poster many times to ensure that all of the data was accurate and that I learned how scientific posters are portrayed. I created my poster, and next week will be more focused on practicing my presentation skills. This week left me with a lot of time to reflect on the lessons learned which I will take with me throughout my STEM journey. I managed to overcome setbacks, and I was motivated throughout the REU. There were very few days where I felt hopeless or stressed out, and I am very thankful for that. Being in a material science lab while being a computer science major really opened my eyes to countless possibilities. I still believe that computer science is my main interest, but getting to experience lab work has been great. I hope that next year I will be able to pursue a summer internship in computer science. I believe that is the only way to solidify my choice to stay in that field. I do have to say that I will miss the Rice campus, especially the serveries, and recreational center. Hopefully, I will be accepted to Rice now that I have this wonderful experience.
The fact that week 8 just ended is making me realize how fast time goes by. It feels like just last week we were at the orientation and getting introduced to our mentors. I will blame some of that on the Hurricane! Anyway, this week has been the first full week I worked in a while, given that we had the holiday as well. I prioritized getting my abstract finalized, as well as doing some last-minute testing. I now have a full data set with 4 different carbon ratios for the 60 μm cathodes. The 40 μm data is all being tested at once currently, hopefully, I will be able to include it in my poster presentation. I was successful in my task of finding a slurry recipe that works for the 2% carbon ratio, which my lab has not studied before. On Tuesday, I prepared cathode strips and left them to dry. Then on Wednesday I prepared them and assembled 6 coin cells at once, and this pretty much ends my work in the lab. Now I am just waiting for the tests to finish, which take around 180 hours, but I am hoping to receive good data.
It honestly feels like I was just getting started in this research. As soon as I started grasping the concepts and getting successful data, the time ran out. I have been utilizing my time outside of the lab to design my poster, and I should be able to finalize it once the rest of the testing is done. After this REU is over, I am going on vacation to Kosovo with my brothers who live in Jordan. It should be a nice break before going back to college!
This week was once again short due to Hurricane Beryl. I spent half of the week without electricity, but eventually got it back and I felt extremely grateful to have AC. The Metro system has not been working at full capacity, so the commute has been more of a hassle and took a lot more time than usual. I hope that everyone else has been safe with the electricity working!
In the lab, I worked on analyzing all of the data I obtained by making graphs and comparisons. I also made more coin cells to test and slurry to use next week after it dries. There has not been anything new, it is simply repeating the steps with different ingredients. I do not mind that, however, since now I can work in a groove where I multitask.
Time is really flying by at this REU. We have four weeks left, and the fun part has just begun. This week, I was assigned to test out and create a recipe for a cathode material that has never been tested in our lab. It was the first time that I was finding something new, which was exciting! With it being a short week, and the cathode slurry needing to dry overnight, I could only make 2 cathode strips, which were both deemed not to fit the weight requirement. Therefore, after some simple calculations and using the failed strips, I created a strip that was left to dry until Monday.
During the two days off that I received, I was able to see some friends and spend time with them. That pretty much sums up my week, I hope next week brings news of success!
This week has been very successful for me, and I am very thankful for that. Even though at the beginning of the week I assembled 4 battery cells that all short-circuited from the start, I came back the next day and made 4 more that all worked and 3 of them are currently being tested. As for the coin cells I made last week, they are also very successful in the testing so far. This should give me a great baseline of comparison between two cathode mixtures. I plan to start developing my own mixtures that might be useful for the lab. Being five weeks into this REU has taught me things I would have never thought about, even though I use batteries daily. It has also taught me how precise and careful you need to be in labs to get the desired results. Rushing through things, especially the assembly process, can ruin the days work I had put into that cell.
Since we are at the halfway point, I believe that I could possibly get more successful tests and data for my final comparison of all of the mixtures I have created. I had to go to Dallas this week to attend my cousin’s engagement party, so I finished all of my lab work on Wednesday and monitored the testing as well as analyzed the data remotely on Thursday and Friday. I am very excited to start working on my poster presentation, and I am thankful that I eventually understood my assignment even though it took many questions.
This week was the most uneventful thus far for me since I got sick. In the days I was in the lab, I worked on creating many cells for testing, and they will hopefully show great results in the data. I have been sick since Wednesday, and on the days that I could not go to the lab, I analyzed my data remotely and kept up with how my batteries were holding up. Our data-collection program is beneficial since I can work from home on such days. I also spent time working on the presentation for Monday, as well as reading some scientific articles I found regarding my research. Unfortunately, they are outdated and will not help much in my lab work. This was expected, however, since the research being done in my lab is hoping for better results than past cathode mixtures. I am sad that I could not attend the field trip, but staying safe and avoiding the spreading of the illness is more important.
I hope to start going to the lab again on Monday, and I am looking forward to better results and data sets!
This week was the most hands-on I have been in my lab since my arrival. On Monday I hit the ground running by using the cathode strips I prepared last week to prepare actual coin cells in the glove box. I do have to say that at the beginning of this week, the glove box was my worst enemy. I felt like I was working extremely slowly because it was difficult to have three pairs of gloves on while being inside a vacuum. I can now see that they started me with thin cathodes because they are generally uniform and flat. The lack of curvature helps me practice building the battery, but as the cathode gets thicker then it will be a bit tricky dealing with it curving inside the cell. Eventually, when I had three coin cells built, I began testing them and learned how to read the graphs that the program makes. These tests take a very long time, usually around 80 hours or more, which also tests my patience. The test works by going through cycles of charging and discharging the batteries, and the goal is to have smooth curves in the graph (which I did not have at all). With this first batch, 2 of the 3 short-circuited, meaning that we could not test them and they were wasted. The last one is still currently being tested, and the curves originally were all over the place, but now they are looking somewhat better.
Moving on from the first batch, I used the same cathode materials that were left over to assemble three more cells. I was much faster inside the glove box now that I got the hang of it. Unfortunately, one short-circuited as soon as it was attached, and the other did not have enough voltage flowing through it. Therefore, these two cells could not be tested. The last one, however, is doing amazing so far and it shows great promise with a good capacity.
This is the glove box where the most time-consuming part of the lab takes place.
This week, I also prepared another cathode strip, and not a single part of it fits within the parameters in weight for me to use in a battery cell, so that felt like a waste of two days’ worth of working and waiting on it. I was assured by my mentors that it is pretty common for that to happen and that I need to just keep trying. As of right now, I just made another strip and it is drying in the oven. On Monday I will keep working on it and hopefully it fits within the weight requirements. I can start testing my own recipes for the cathodes as soon as I master the original one, and hopefully I will be able to find something useful for this lab.
Not much happened this week outside of the lab, but my routine is still holding together. I am very excited for this weekend since Eid is on Sunday, and I will be spending time with my family in celebration of it.
Overall, I would call this another successful week, and I honestly can not believe that is has been three weeks already. I can only hope for great results this upcoming week.
This week was the first full week, and a lot of it was spent reading more on the topic of lithium-ion batteries. There is a lot of interesting information that gives me insight into how the batteries of devices and vehicles that I use every day work. Fun fact: LIBs are the batteries of choice because they have the highest capacity with the least drawback. For example, unlike older batteries, LIBs would not get used to a charging cycle. That is where the battery life decreases when you charge it before being empty. Therefore, researching ways to make them more efficient while using less materials and space will be great for the environment.
I did finally start working in the lab. It is extremely exciting but I have to control my excitement and work slowly until I figure things out. So far, I have mixed the cathode active material and spread it on a piece of aluminum foil. This lab does require a lot of patience, however. Once the material is fully mixed and on the foil, I have to let it air dry in a fume hood for a day, and then move it to an oven for a day. I was not expecting such a slow process but it is important to have the material completely dry before calendaring it. Calendaring is just simply compressing down the material to a certain thickness, and I am currently starting with 60 μm because thinner cathodes are easier to work with. Therefore until I get good practice building batteries with thin cathodes, I will move up to thicker cathodes. The next step after calendaring would be to cut the active material into the right size and take measurements of its weight and resistance. Then finally, the assembly would take place inside of the glove box.
This is the active material on aluminum foil air drying.
Outside of the lab, we had OURI meetings on Tuesday and Thursday. They were very informative and helpful in developing our research skills and working with mentors. I was also eating very good food this week both in the cafe that is in the O’Conner building and the Seibel servery. My work-life balance has also been good since I still find time to go out with family and friends, as well as get my daily workouts without any stress. I also found out this week that I have won first place the Student Research Award from the LSC-CyFair library! This was awarded to me based on my first ever research project I have done in the Fall.
Seibel Servery Food
Dandelion Cafe Food
I hope that next week can be as exciting and educational as this week.
Given that it is only the first week of this REU, a lot of my time was used to learn and study my topic. I believe that having a good grasp on what is currently being studied is very important; hence why I am taking the time to read published articles and watch videos regarding Lithium Ion Batteries (LIBs). So far, I have learned what materials are present in a lithium-ion battery cell. I am partially knowledgeable of how the materials produce electricity, therefore I will continue studying the electrochemistry involved until I understand it at a high level. I am also in the process of coming up with a research topic that fits within my task of building LIB coin cells. Since I have background knowledge of computer science and coding, I will try to utilize that to help Dr. Tang’s progress in his research.
Additionally, my mentor has shown me around the lab and the entire process of making the battery cells. The most time-consuming part is the assembly of the cell itself, where a glovebox is used. I learned how the glove box functions, and that its use is important as lithium is highly reactive with oxygen. I have yet to try it, however, I can already tell it will take some time to get used to working with such machinery.
This week also brought forth some challenges to my usual lifestyle, which was expected to happen. I have changed my daily routine by waking up extremely early to exercise at the Gibbs Recreational Center before I come into the lab. My car also broke down, so I learned to utilize the Metro transportation system for the first time. After finishing my work day, I head home and relax for a few hours before falling asleep.
Overall, this week has been a wonderful experience of what it feels like to maintain a full-time job. I believe this builds good habits to stay responsible. Learning a different field will come with its challenges and setbacks, however, I will make sure to stay on top of it in order to get the most out of this REU. I am very excited to start working in the lab and find a research topic that will also benefit my mentors.
