The End is Nigh

This is the last week of my summer research...

A bit dramatic but I'm doing equilibrium dialysis right now so I feel Frodo's pain ;)

 Last week I did the nanoparticle titration with sodium chloride and found that partial aggregation occurs at 100 mM and complete aggregation occurs at 200 mM. Then I did a dialysis of pure PSS in sodium chloride concentrations up to 50 mM and ran DLS and ICP on the resultant samples. The DLS showed some weak trends that may indicate a change in the PSS conformation dependent on salt concentration. The ICP results showed no difference in the amount of Na/S at different salt concentrations.

This week I am running an equilibrium dialysis on a new batch of PSS coated nanoparticles against a few sodium concentrations up to 50 mM. I got a new dialysis system that holds 4 mL at a time so I can run the same amount of sample in fewer tubes. Each concentration has 2 tubes, one will undergo both the salt and water and the other just the salt dialysis. This way we can run DLS on the samples that still have high salt concentration while running ICP on the water dialyzed samples without having to worry about background sodium.

This week, I will only have time to do the dialysis and the complete workup for it. I'm going abroad in the fall, to Lancaster University England, but I am looking forward to continuing this research in the spring!