REU 2009 Blog: Jonathan Padelford
The Magnet Lab's Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program draws students from all over the country to spend eight weeks learning from the leading researchers in their chosen field. This blog chronicles two undergraduates interested in science careers – one from a large university and another from a small college – as they learn their way around the lab and expand their research horizons.
The Bloggers
Chemistry major Jonathan Padelford is a rising junior at Columbus State University, a small school about 100 miles southwest of Atlanta. Instead of working at a local sign supply warehouse like he'd normally be doing, he's spending the summer being mentored by scholar/scientist Ke Han of the lab's Magnet Science and Technology group.
Final Week: July 20-24
Jonathan Padelford
My poster session went pretty good and I did get a few questions, but nothing I couldn't answer. I made sure beforehand that I would understand how to explain everything. Most people just asked me to explain a little bit about what I did and wished me good luck. All the main stuff I felt pretty comfortable with answering.
A couple people who work with Dr. Han came by, and I tried to sound a little smarter around them because I'm sure they'll give him feedback. I hope I'll get to stay in touch with Dr. Han. When we went to lunch he tried a little to sway me into materials science. He says that when I graduate I could look into doing a combination of materials science and chemistry, which I might look at doing during graduate school.
My mentor back home is wanting me to do something like this every summer until I graduate, so I'll probably be doing one or two more REU programs.
I think one of the most important things I'm going to be taking back is more of a real sense of what the lab environment is like. Back at school, the labs are really linear. It's do this, do that, and record your results. It's so structured that it's a lot harder to do your own problem solving.
Week 7: July 13-17
Jonathan Padelford
This week I've worked a lot on my poster and we continued making copper and chromium samples. They just got a bigger machine and we're trying to figure out how to work with that. Everything is pretty much worked out, but we have to wait for a technical person to come out and install one program it needs. It put a little bit of a dent in what we're trying to do, because we want to make a bigger sample with that bigger power source.
It's been fun at times and other times it's been aggravating, but that's science.
It's kind of messed up to be part of all this progress and know I have to leave next week. If I could stay longer I definitely would. With this new machine it will just be so much easier to get a good look at the samples.
A lot the background of electrical chemistry is still over my head. It's all physical chemistry and I haven't taken that yet. It's still two more years from where I'm at right now. He gave me a book to read through but at the stage I'm at, it's hard to understand some of the principles and I don't really know what's going on. It has some of the same equations I learned in general chemistry, but they're more advanced derivatives of them. I have actually sat back from the book before and just been like, "I don't know what that says." Dr. Han explained some of the concepts I needed to know and it cleared up a lot.
There's a lot of inorganic chemistry that I'm learning about this summer; I take that class next semester. Working here this summer has pulled me further away from organic chemistry.
My poster is going pretty well. I got an early start on it so I wouldn't have to rush finishing, and I'm pretty close to being done. It seems like I was just coming here two weeks ago. It's kind of a bummer that it's ending this fast. It's been fun at times and other times it's been aggravating, but that's science.
Week 6: July 6-10
We continued with the chromium and copper multilayering work, but instead of doing the process over a single day now we're doing it over two full days. We slowed the experiments down so that we can get the layers the thickness we need. It has made for some pretty long work – I've been here from nine to six every day this week. It's a lot of checking and waiting and making small adjustments.
We don't have our results yet from this longer experiment cycle, but I believe we had our first sample sent off. Although it takes longer now, the thicker plating definitely makes life easier in the end. It's easier to take off the substrate and it's not as brittle. When we were speeding it up, you could barely remove the material properly because it would just flake off. But now it's actually got some more strength to it.
I can't believe I only have two weeks to go. I'm not really done with what I'm working on, and I want to continue with it and see where it goes. They have been working on multilayering for a while, so someone else will keep doing the project. I think last year a postdoc was working on it, and I picked up where he left off.
In the slow times I've been working on my poster. I don't have the abstract or anything done yet, but I've been working explaining some of the controls for the work we've been doing, along with some background information to put the project in more of a context. Then next week I can fill in some more specifics.
I'm glad I have a couple years left of undergraduate work so I can do a couple more programs like this.
Looking at Dr. Han's job, I think I'd like to go in a direction where I could spend more time in the lab. He has a lot of things going on, and it seems like it would be a distraction in the end. Later on in life I wouldn't mind it, but until then I'd rather be a lab rat. It's a lot more fun. As far as teaching goes, I don't think I have the kind of personality to deal with all the stresses a teacher goes through on a daily basis.
The lab part of the environment – actually doing the experiments and dealing with the materials – is definitely my favorite part. This has definitely helped shape what I want to look for in a science related job later on.
This has been awesome, and I'm glad I have a couple years left of undergraduate work so I can do a couple more programs like this.
Week 5: June 29-July 3
This week we started multilayering with chromium and copper. Yesterday was our first attempt at it and we were successful. Today we're working to create another sample to see if we can reproduce the results.
To be able to plate the chromium on top of the copper we used dual bath electrodeposition. This is where you have two different electrolyte solutions instead of having one single solution. We started off plating the copper onto our substrate (MP35N). Afterwards, we switched to the chromium solution, changed the anode to a lead bar, and plated the chromium on top of the copper.
Today we're just focused on doing it again. The copper takes a while to plate, so it takes two days to get the thickness we want to achieve. We started yesterday – normally we just plate the copper for five hours but we're trying out leaving it on overnight to see how thick the layer will plate. We're trying to keep the copper layers within 200 micrometers – once we can establish that we can plate the chromium.
This whole experience is going by extremely quickly. It seems like I was just starting out last week and now we're moved all the way into things they haven't really been able to produce yet. Overall this has definitely been a great experience.
You have to realize that you are going to make mistakes and allow some flexibility for that.
My biggest takeaway from this so far has been learning about the lab environment and seeing the kind of things scientists do on a daily basis. You have to manage your time well. You have to realize that you are going to make mistakes and allow some flexibility for that. It's not always going to go the way you planed it go, and sometimes even figuring out what the mistake is in the first place can take a while.
You are going to have failures and you are going to have to be equipped to get over that. Some of those failures are because of little mistakes you make and some of them are things you can't help, like the machine or the power supply not operating correctly. Learning the patience to get through those kinds of moments and accepting them as part of research is probably one of the biggest lessons I'm going to take back to school.
Week 4: June 22-26
Jonathan Padelford
This week, we've been trying to plate chromium. Until yesterday it was a failure; it was going pretty badly. But yesterday we increased the amps running through the solution so it finally plated. The key was the rate at which it was being deposited.
At first, the solution didn't dissolve at all and I had to filter it. It was a thick solution so I ended up spending an hour and a half sitting still on a stool pouring solution into a filter. It was pretty bad. Thankfully I got all that out of the way, and ended up with a thick goo at the bottom.
Today we're going to go back and see if we can plate a larger chromium sample since mine was pretty small. If that works, then we're also going to try and plate copper on top of that.
I am learning something new from Dr. Han pretty much every day. I consult him before anybody, and we probably talk 30 minutes to an hour a day – he has helped with the analysis and figuring out what was going on in my samples as well as other things. He has a direction that he wants me to go in and he's starting to ask me what I think about it, and if there's anything I might do differently.
I'm definitely starting to get more comfortable day-to-day with the things I've been doing. The copper plating I feel like I could do any day, but the chromium is making life a lot more complicated. It will take a little time, but I know I can figure out a way to make it easier.
Week 3: June 15-19
I spent this week almost entirely on the electroplating, doing research on it and seeing how we could make it better and easier on us. We changed the solution this week. At first we thought it was pretty good because it made the structure smaller and everything. But then the compound we introduced embedded itself into the copper, so it caused the copper to be brittle. Because of this, we couldn't even scrape the copper off of the substrate. It would just rupture and fall apart. The first time it was really bad, the second time it was a little bit stronger, and on our third try our sample was completely ruined (but because someone turned off our power source).
We did finally get our other chemicals in, so we can make some other solutions. I'm going to be doing chromium plating next week. I also spent some time trying to track down some more chemicals. A lot of them I have never heard of, and one of the chemicals we were looking for can only be bought from China.
Working with Dr. Han is really good – he's pretty awesome. He helps me with anything I need help with, and we are learning a lot together. He hasn't used the machine that powers our experiments for a while, so we're learning to use it together and trying to figure out how to change its parameters to what we want. We had to contact the makers once, because the manual is vague.
Sometimes it's a little hectic and there's been a couple times I wanted to pull my hair out, especially when I walked in and saw that our sample was ruined. But it's pretty cool to see what all these scientists go through on a day-to-day basis.
I saw one guy last week who I know was here for 12 hours. When I came in that morning he was already working, and later in the night I had to come back to pick something up and he was still here. A lot of these guys are really intense, and you can tell they love what they're doing.
Yesterday all the REUs went and talked with the guy who runs the physics admissions for graduate students. He talked a lot about how to apply for graduate school, what they look for, and he explained the whole process. His talk was mainly about FSU's graduate physics program, but it's still good to hear about the graduate admissions process because it's so important if you're going to be a science major and you want a good job. Everyone in my field is going to have at least a Master's and probably a Ph.D.
Spending the time here really does help you to sort out the kind of a job you'd like to have. I was already leaning towards working in a lab, and this time at the Magnet Lab puts a stamp on that – toward starting out working in a lab and then maybe transitioning to teaching later on.
Week 2: June 8-12
Jonathan Padelford
I actually started some electroplating experiments this week. Dr. Han wasn't expecting me to get results right away, but I did get some usable results the first time, which was really cool. I also got some results that he had me reproduce so he could study them a little bit more. He wanted to see what was making the copper so hard to remove.
Electroplating copper is a lot like putting chrome on a motorcycle part – it's the same basic process. You mix a metal ion solution – the solution we're using is copper sulfate and sulfuric acid. In this solution you place an anode and cathode and hook them to a power supply. Once the power supply is hooked up, the current running into the solution allows the ions to reduce and plate the metal or other substrate connected to the cathode. It also replenishes the ion supply by stripping the substance on the anode of ions. The process sounds more complicated than it is – you pretty much hook up two electrodes, run electricity though them and wait for however long you want to plate the material.
We're trying to make the structures as small as we can. Dr. Han wants to be able to produce copper nanostructures. I have made a couple samples, but we haven't actually looked at any to see what size structures we have made.
I've been getting a computer hooked up to let me use LabVIEW. I also went through our lab to check out what chemicals we have and what would have to be ordered to run the next experiments: Later on, Dr. Han wants us to try not just copper but a copper and cobalt, or copper and chromium mix. So it will be plated with two different things, and I need to figure out what chemicals we'll need to accomplish that.
Dr. Han gave me this thick book of the chemicals to either go through or go online. Some of the prices are kind of ridiculous – you start to figure out why lab budgets can be so expensive. Of course at my school we (the students) aren't buying our own chemicals, so it's cool to see this part of it – where these things come from.
Some of the things people in the lab take for granted I am still getting used to. Earlier this week I was working alone in the lab and one of the pressure release valves on the dewars went off and I about ran out of the lab. Of course then I found out what it was. I also made an alarm go off in the lab – the vent hoods here are different than the ones at my school and when I lifted it, it went off until I could find somebody to show me how to get it to turn off.
It seems like everybody I meet here is a physicist and as soon as they learn that I'm in chemistry they start poking fun. There is definitely some friendly rivalry. I have been needing to come up with some comeback jokes so I'm not just getting teamed up on by the others.
Week 1: June 1-5
At my college, my organic chemistry professor is friends with Jose (Sanchez, who coordinates the lab's REU program). My professor thought I would be interested in coming here, and once I saw the Web site I knew this is what I wanted to do this summer.
Since I've been in school the only thing that has ever really interested me is science. I guess it started with the general science classes you have in elementary school. What really got me into science was chemistry in 10th grade. From then on I knew what I wanted to do. I had taken physics and everything, but I really liked everything about chemistry. It's more useful than people think, and it offers a lot of different types of careers.
When I first got here we had two days to get used to the town and campus before we started work at the lab. I still don't know my way around because Tallahassee is a little bit bigger than my town, and my campus is tiny compared to FSU. Monday when we got to the lab they took us through orientation and showed us around the lab.
I wasn't really sure what to expect, and now that I'm here, this place is crazy. I've never been in a laboratory like this. I go to a small school that just got its first mass spectrometer and small NMR, and here there are large NMR machines, lasers, electron microscopes and other scientific hardware. The 900 MHz NMR here is just awesome, as well as the 45 tesla hybrid magnet. I have never seen anything like that.
I would like to work in a place like this when I get older, so it's really a perfect experience for me. When I first started talking to professor Han about what I'd be doing it kind of scared me a little because I didn't know a whole lot about it, but he's been really helpful and gotten me through the tough starting points.
Prof. Han started me off with a couple of things to read, so I've been reading for the past two days. Then yesterday we got to get started on the actual science part of it. He showed me around the lab and then we got started making solutions.
The topic that Prof. Han gave me is really interesting and I want to know about that. Right at this moment it is just basically over my head. What he does with plating copper and chromium is really interesting and I want to learn a whole bunch more about that.
I didn't think there would be a huge amount of people here, but you start looking down the hallways and the amount of personnel is crazy. It's really cool to see these people are being published all over the world and working with people from everywhere.
For more information about the MagLab's REU program contact Jose Sanchez at sanchez@magnet.fsu.edu or (850) 645-0033.
Classroom Outreach
