6/17 Daily Blog Amber Latona







I had an interesting day today. Yesterday I had received some papers that give background information on my project, along with the synthesis. I spent most of the day reading through these papers in order to get a better understanding of my topic. I made sure to read carefully and slowly, so that way I would be able to obtain all of the information. I learned that my project involves Manganese oxide. This element is what causes the blue pigments once it is inserted into trigonal bipyramidal sites of metal oxides. In other words, this blue color results from crystal field splitting with trigonal bypyramidal coordination and Manganese-Oxygen bonds.
 The more Mn3+ that is doped into YIn03, the darker the color. I have learned that the ultimate goal of my project is to determine results that lead to inexpensive, earth abundant, environmentally benign, highly stable blue inorganic pigments. Therefore, this should be a positive experiment.

Lastly, today I have learned how to clean an instrument called the autoclave. I used sandpaper in order to wipe away excess residue from previous experiments. I then learned how to piece them back together. It was fun to do some cleaning in the lab today!