Hello!

I’m going to be on-time with this update!

This month has been full of research successes and excitement! With all of my research successes, including the mercury titration fluorescence spectra and the metal solution titrations, Prof. Harbron decided that my results are paper-worthy. So, November has been spent carrying out various experiments to help support the paper and my results. This included control experiments to show that the nanoparticles don’t react with mercury or any other metals without being doped with the RB-PITC dye, which I was easily able to show by collecting fluorescence spectra of the control nanoparticles before and after mercury addition (as well as after other metal solution addition).

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Hello!

I’m sorry that this October blog has taken me so long to post. Schoolwork, grad school applications, and research kept me busy during this month. However, exciting things have happened in the lab!

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Hello again!

I’m so sorry it has taken me so long to post another blog, but midterms and applications have taken over my life! Anyways, the last time I posted I had talked about switching to a new coating polymer, PVCoCo, for my nanoparticles. Since then, I have had beautiful results that are paper-quality. These results have fluorescence spectra with great isoemissive points (a point on fluorescence spectra where the wavelength and concentration are independent of one another). My results have also shown that my nanoparticle system is a better method for detecting mercury since the mercury sensitive dye, RB-PITC, is fluorescently brighter due to FRET with the conjugated polymer nanoparticles than being directly excited on its own. Thus, my system allows for a more sensitive detection of mercury on an order of magnitude around 10-15.

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Hello, again!

Since I last posted in July, I have only been able to do about one and a half weeks worth of research, since summer research ended on August 5th and then hurricane Irene stalled my research efforts the first week of school. Despit

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Hello, again!

This month has really been like a roller coaster for me with my research. When I last updated this blog in June, I was on a research high. I was getting fantastic results that were reproducible. My nanoparticles were responding to mercury. Then July happened. For more than a week I struggled to produce the same results that I had gotten in June.

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Hello again!

I know that it’s been a while since I last posted, but I’ve been busy working on my research. I am currently still waiting for the mercury sensitive dye to be synthesized so that I can covalently bond them to my conjugated polymer nanoparticles for mercury detection. While I have been waiting for the dye, I have been trying to make mercury sensitive nanoparticles without covalently bonding the dyes to the nanoparticles. I have been using my normal procedure for making nanoparticles. This procedure includes doping the nanoparticles with a given concentration of the mercury sensitive dye, rhodamine B-PITC. To add stability these doped nanoparticles, I have begun to incorporate polystyrene into my procedure for making the nanoparticles. My theory is that by incorporating the polystyrene with the nanoparticles, the rhodamine dyes are less likely to detach from the nanoparticles and float away, which can make my mercury detection results less meaningful since the dyes aren’t able to interact with the conjugated polymer and cause a change in fluorescence intensities.

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Hello, again!

Today was my first day back in the lab. I wasn’t able to make any nanoparticles to test with mercury yet because my labmate Will and I first had to go through the lab inventory. I also have to wait for the mercury-sensitive rhodamine dye derivative to be synthesized so that I can then make the nanos, which will take a few days. Until then, I will continue my stability studies comparing polystyrene-coated nanoparticles to control nanoparticles, and I will also be wrapping up another project for Prof. Harbron.

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Hello!

My name is Beth Childress. I am a junior at the College majoring in chemistry. For over a year, I have been working in Dr. Elizabeth Harbron’s organic chemistry lab researching conjugated polymer nanoparticles. The research that I will be doing this summer will focus on the use of conjugated polymer nanoparticles as mercury sensors. Much of what I do this summer will help provide the information and data I will need to write my senior honors thesis.

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