This is Moji’s first summer research and she is investigating the fluorescence in polymeric carbon dots. After synthesizing PCDs from citric acid and urea, she made an unexpected discovery during the purification process of dialysis. The dialysis solution was supposed to be only waste products but turned out to be also fluorescent like the original crude synthesis sample. The surprising find raised a central question: is the glow now really coming from the carbon dots particles themselves, or from small molecule byproducts that slipped through the membrane? To find out, she is comparing three samples from crude PCDs, dialyzed PCDs, and the dialysis solution. She using various methods to characterize the three. Initial results suggest that maybe the small molecular fluorophores formed during the synthesis are responsible for some of the fluorescence that is typically attributed to PCDs. With new approaches and data still to come, she is excited to see where the glow leads.
Moji Virojanadul ’27 – The Unexpected Glow
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