hello everyone
here western i do research in chemistry geared towards making water repellent surfaces know what
repellent is a widely utilized phenomenon especially in hospitals to kill bacteria but it's also
used for more mundane things like protecting your kitchen counter
my job as a chemist is to design new materials to make to become more
repellent to do this i must do three things i must first synthesized make new
materials capable of this task i must deposited onto a circus in finally test its
properties let me tell you story of how i do this in the lap
we first start off with synthesis making new components to really understand chemistry on a
fundamental level you have to look at it as if it architecture chemistry its architecture
of the small we build design and manipulate things and such small scales that we
cannot see "'em" with our eyes
architects have blueprints for their buildings and structures can is also have blueprints for their
chemical structures or molecule seen at the top diagram
sometimes making these chemical structures can be a bit of a daunting task as are
starting materials what actually ignite before your eyes upon contact with air
an example of this is fostering gasped each three an example of that can be
seen at the top right
well but with a bit of training in some unintentional fires we can get over
this task
we can look at this chemical structure just like an architect looked at their blueprints
everything has a purpose
so the green components in part the watercolour properties that i'm interested in the black
component acts as a scaffold holding everything together and the blue component acts as the
glue and this leading to the next step that is the deposition this blue component
when exposed ultraviolet light from an instrument that we use in our lab from you
as you can see in the bottom right
it will undergo a chemical reaction in mobilising it directly onto the surface that we
are interested in is at this point to be contested properties
is a watercolour how water account is it
but it only one things come full circle do i get excited that my research
you can share with you a bit of my philosophy
how is it possible that something we can see with a rise such as moderate
health services manifest itself from something we can not see a chemical structure what is
it about fundamental nature at such a small-scale its composition in architecture that are rises
to such a phenomenon these are the data collection to keep you have an i
but nonetheless
but we what we figure this out is by making many different chemical structures with
a different architectures are compositions we change a little bit maybe the watercolour component the
scuffle and we observe the change in the properties that results from that this is
called a structure property relationship
and by doing this as chemists can understand the world around us we can connect
the scene to the unseen were able to kill bacteria on surfaces and of course
protector kitchen counters thank you