Doing Research

For the last two days Nicole and I have been working in the lab on our research.  On Wednesday we worked with another student, Alejandra.  She is the master of the AutoLab equipment.  We are working with a three electrode cell in order to plate zinc oxide onto glass.  We began by cutting 1x3 cm pieces of conducting glass.  Nicole and I were not nearly as graceful with the cutter as Alejandra, yet, she was very supportive and added our crooked pieces to the pile to use.

Here I am with my first attempt at cutting the glass.

We also prepared the electrolyte solution for the cell.  Eventually we put three electrodes into the cell, the glass piece being one of these.  We then started a long process of plating the zinc oxide onto the glass.  The idea was to let the current flow for one hour for each piece of glass.  For each piece of glass we changed the voltage that was being used.  This was a long process because there was an hour of waiting between each reset.  We used this time in between to run some errands including eating lunch.  We had a long day in the lab but at the end of the 8 hours we had four completed plates.

Today in the lab we took our glass plates to the spectrophotometer.  We measured the transmission of light through each of the plates.  The transmission of light relates to the amount of zinc oxide that was plated onto the glass.  We were looking to find the wavelength of light that had the best absorbance with each plate.

Here is Rodrigo setting up the machine.

Once the data was collected Rodrigo did some magic with the numbers calculations.  We were able to see the value of the band gap of the glass samples.  While this may not seem exciting to some of you, on two of our plates we obtained a value of 3.4eV and the accepted is 3.2eV.  We were excited about how close we came.

On Monday we will look at our plates under a powerful microscope to check out how smooth the plating is.

So, one more thing to add today is my adjustment to the weather here.  Although compared to Minnesota winters the winter here is VERY mild, I did not bring enough warm clothing.  There is not much heating indoors so sweaters are needed.  I did not bring one so yesterday I went to the store and bought one.  Today I bought a new jacket to bring with me to the mountains tomorrow.

Below is a picture of me at the pier in my new sweater.  I may wear it every day I am here.

We are off for a three day weekend to the north (where it is even colder).  I am looking forward to going to the observatory.  I feel as if the trip is going very well so far.  I am able to get around and do what I need to do even though I know almost no Spanish.