By Marcus Smith ’27, Student Correspondent<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not every day that students get to work on prominent scientific research, but several graduate and undergraduate students from The University of Scranton had that opportunity last year at the helm of Riddhiman Medhi, Ph.D., from the University\u2019s Chemistry Department.<\/p>\n
The group of seven students worked closely with Dr. Medhi to figure out a solution to a problem that has plagued chemists for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cMetal nanoparticles in our field of research so far have been mostly made in water, and the moment you try to put them into any other liquid, they aggregate. These particles have optical properties, but when they aggregate, they lose their optical properties,\u201d Dr. Medhi explained.<\/p>\n
Over the course of three years and with the help of his student researchers, Dr. Medhi succeeded in stabilizing various metal particles, especially gold and silver, to a point where they could resist solvents that are used in chemistry research.<\/p>\n
The ways metal nanoparticles can be studied have expanded dramatically because of the group\u2019s research.<\/p>\n
\u201cReactions that cannot be done in water can now be done, because now we’re able to transfer them into other solvents and liquids where different kinds of chemistry are possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Madison Waltz \u02bc27, a chemistry and history double-major from Dunmore, was one of the undergraduate students who took part in the lab research.<\/p>\n
Working with Dr. Medhi was her first experience doing lab work when she joined the project in her freshman year at Scranton.<\/p>\n
\u201cDr. Medhi was my general chemistry professor and I saw that he put some of his work with the nanoparticles on his lecture slides. I thought it was really cool, so I went to his office hours and the rest is history,\u201d Waltz said.<\/p>\n
She said that working on such groundbreaking scientific research was surprising, and not something she expected to be able to do as an undergraduate student.<\/p>\n
Not only that, helping Dr. Medhi write the research paper proved to be helpful in her other classes, as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cWriting up certain sections, doing the background research for some of the work has been foundational to my abilities that I use now in my classes because it’s just a different type of writing, very different to traditional stuff,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n
In addition to working with students from Scranton, Dr. Medhi also collaborated with John C. De\u00e0k, Ph.D., from Scranton\u2019s Department of Chemistry, and T. Randall Lee, Ph.D., from the University of Houston in Houston, Texas, to conduct imaging of the nanoparticles being studied.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to look at the properties of the particles we made, so we measured their size using dynamic light scattering and high-resolution electron microscopy, and they helped with that,\u201d Dr. Medhi said.<\/p>\n