Combining two blog posts in one - Dany Joumaa

I figured I'd finish a blog post that should've been up last week, and also share with you what I've done this week.

Post 1 (last week)

Today, we checked on Eu(Tta)3 to find that it had not recrystallized at all, despite our attempts to recrystallize it with the rotovap. We've thus decided that we're merely going to let it sit and recrystallize over the weekend, and hopefully we should see something of it.

As far as EuDBM is concerned, we have proceeded to react it with TPTZ. We started by first scraping out all of the crystalline solid sitting at the bottom of its round-bottom flask (an artifact of recrystallization). From there, we removed some of the liquid into an ampule (a small container) and tried to remove as much supernatant material as possible while collecting a nice collection of solid at the bottom. This solid was then dried out with a light vacuum.
Next, we set out to react the remaining solid with TPTZ. We washed the TPTZ with ethanol and the DBM with acetone at a 1:1 ratio, then left them to sit and react under heated reflux.

Here's some data that I can't think of a better place to put:
weight of container - 3963.4 mg
weight of container plus EuDBM- 3980.4 mg
remaining solid - 17.0 mg

Lots of science, I know. I can't help it.

April 1st (this week)

After much chaos in the world of Dany Joumaa outside of the lab, I've finally had the time to put together another blog post of what we're up to. Today we walked into the lab that the Eu(Tta)3 that we had expected to recrystallize earlier had still not recrystallized. Remember, we need the recrystallization to occur in order for us to procure impurity-free product. We tried using a rotovap (detailed in an earlier blog post) in order to remove the compound's solvent, but only to find that the compound without its solvent is a gooey, honey-like thing that can't really recrystallize at room temperature. So, I made the suggestion of freezing the compound in hopes that it, in its solid form, would be much easier to take out of the flask. Dr Zheng responded well to the idea and that's what we're currently trying :)

As for our other compound, EU(DBM)3TPTZ, we sought to recrystallize it as well. Although this was already reacted with TPTZ, we sought to recrystallize it in order to stay clear of any impurities brought out by possible side reactions. We inputted the compound into a makeshift cotton-pipet filtration system and collected the supernatant. From there, we let the compound evaporate naturally under the fumehood. We chose natural evaporation in this case so that the recrystallization process could take place slowly, but accurately, in recovering solid compound.

Finally, I worked with Dr. Correlas in launching my next NWChem calculation: acac. Allow me to explain: acac is short for acetyl acetone, which is basically a simple organic compound that includes two methyl groups bounded in a diketone structure (does that help?) This is one of the simpler compounds that I will encounter in this project, and hence it is why I am calculating it now. Calculations take the UA supercomputers days to process, so it's very likely that I'll get the results of this calculation by Monday next week. Once this calculation is complete, I will be but one more calculation away from computing the ligand Tta, which, as you may remember, is currently in one of my compounds.

That being said, I figure I should congratulate many of you for your fantastic college acceptances :) Great job, you guys.

--Dany.