Author: Yumi Ha Major: Biochemistry 

During the fall semester of 2018, I performed research in the Chemistry Department under my advisor Dr. Hassan Beyzavi. The focus of this research is the creations of MOFS, which are metal organic frameworks. MOFs consist of organic linkers that are aligned with inorganic metal clusters. MOFs have a wide variety of applications in structure and providing stability. For this research, the goal is to create MOFs in order to use them for hydrogen storage. This would make it possible to use carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as a free and renewable source of constant energy. MOFs have been explored as a means of hydrogen storage in order to convert carbon dioxide to dihydrogen (H2), which is an efficient source of fuel. 

During the previous semester of my research, I assisted graduate students in creating porphyrin, which is used in making MOFs and COFs (covalent organic frameworks). This is an important process to learn and practice, as porphyrin has many diverse applications. I also assisted Zainab, the graduate student that I have been helping throughout the last year on her research on covalent organic frameworks (COFs) and MOFs. It was interesting to also learn about COFs, as they are very similar to MOFs. Whereas COFs are composed of lightweight elements, such as nitrogen or oxygen, MOFs are made of soft acids (low-oxidative transition metal ions) and hard bases (carboxylates). I also assisted another graduate student on amino acid research with testing of absorbance of NAD and NAD+. Throughout this semester, I continued to practice techniques I learned the past year, such as running a column in order to separate products. This is a common procedure in the synthesis of MOFs and COFs. After separating the product mixture in numbered test tubes, I would test all of them on TLC plates and look at them under UV light in order to compare them. Doing this, I could see which test tubes had product and which ones did not. This also enabled me to see which test tubes had the same products. These products we would combine together and evaporate. We took these products and tested them through spectroscopy, such as NMR, in order to identify the components of the product and see whether or not they were the ones we wanted.  

In regards to MOF and COF syntheses, there were many times we did not get the product we wanted. I would test numerous test tubes and find nothing. There were also several times when the columns did not run well. At this point, we would change the polarity of the solvent, transfer the product mixture to a smaller column, or simply start over. However, every time this happened, it was a learning moment. 

The following semesters in research, I hope to explore more methods in MOF development and do more syntheses on my own. I also wish to work more on specific MOFs needed for hydrogen storage.