Reflection Essay

I did my practicum for Dr. Efrain Rodiguez, who works for the University of Maryland, College Park in the department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. I found this opportunity because he was my general chemistry 1 professor my 1st semester of college. I was active in lecture and attended office hours and got a close bond with him. Later, I remember he would always talk about research in tiny excerpts here and there during lectures and was interested in what he was saying, so I asked for a letter of recommendation and if he had spots open in his lab. As far as advice, I would say get close to all of your major classes professors and try hard in the class. Everything else should fall in place if you want it too.

In this project, I performed solid state synthesis, X- Ray Diffraction, and Thermogravimetric Analysis. Solid state synthesis is different from the synthetic method learned in organic chemistry but once it is learned it is easy to replicate and adjust. XRD and TGA are characterizing techniques that describe crystal structures and weight change in the structure, respectively. These tasks helped me to research alternative methods to generate clean energy and more efficient gas sensors.

As far as science, or chemistry and physics, I learned the utmost about inorganic chemistry. Since, inorganic chemistry is higher level chemistry that utilized the general knowledge from general chemistry and some organic chemistry, there was much to learn. I learned about space groups and symmetries of crystal, the special properties of metal oxides, different characteristic methods mentioned before, and the life of a graduate student and professor that also maintains a lab. By utilizing those two characteristic methods, it was determined the metal oxides can intake oxygen in their crystal lattices. When measured with XRD, the phase, therefore structure, space group and unit cell alters based, changed when going from oxidized to reduced and vise versa. Although the hexagonal unit cell remained constant in the redox process, the symmetry was reduced from R3m to P3 which further proved the oxygen intaking since the symmetry of the molecule was reduced as more oxygen entered the B site bilayer. From this I gained a better chemical understanding of metal oxides and how they can improve the environment. By forcing water to split into hydrogen and oxygen from sunlight and redox chemistry on efficient metal oxides, the creation of clean energy in the form of hydrogen gas is produced with the by product of oxygen. Theoretically, this is a two step process of oxidation and reduction which will return back to the starting metal oxides, which proves to theoretically be a regenerative source of energy. Not only can metal oxides intake oxygen but they can intake greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane, which can be then utilized in gas sensors to determine the concentration of these pollutants in environments that have lower quality of air. Overall, participating in this project solidified my want to learn more chemistry.

This practicum solidified my desire to go to graduate school for materials chemistry. During this time, not only did I learn about chemistry and material science, but I also learned about graduate life and the work life balance of a professor that maintains a lab. The person I worked with from day to day was Stephanie Hong. She taught me everything I know about inorganic materials, but also about graduate life. He mentioned how undergrad is different than graduate school because everything relies heavily on your research which is a different kind of stress. Additionally, depending on your PI, what you do in research from day to day is up to you. I think it's great because it places the future that you have on yourself. Additionally, I learned how much I like the position that Rodriguez is in. He travels a lot, but being able to teach and research are two things I love and he does both very well. In the future I aspire to be a researcher, but maybe later in life I want to teach materials chemistry or inorganic chemistry similar to how Dr. Rodriguez does it.