Day 5
Sanraj's and Xuan Wei's experience (week 1 Batteries):
Today, we finally got view how to make other types of batteries such as the batteries that ran on aluminium and copper foils. Yesterday, the fume hood's glass panel shattered so we were not able to view how the batteries were made. Hence today, our mentor assigned one of his graduate students to take us under his wings and show us how the battery was made.
On the left is an example of a battery that can be bendable. It is mostly used in phones and tablets where its small size and volume can fully function the phone and tablet to its maximum potential.
To make this battery, we must use 2 types of foils: Aluminum and Copper.
The darker-bronze coloured foil is the copper foil
The shinier foil is the aluminium foil.
We must then place the electrolyte and Lithium and graphite between these 2 foils. To do so, we must paint the foils with a paste.
Using this paste, we are able to stick the Lithium and Graphite to the foils without them falling.
This is what the paste looks like after it has been pasted and dried using a vacuum cupboard.
There are different types of pastes as we can see here and all have different purposes.
Next we place all the materials together using this equipment (don't quite know what is the actual name for it) which creates a vacuum inside a small tube. It allows us to put all the content for the building of the battery into the tube that can ultimately be transferred into a glove box for the making of the battery in an Argon-only environment.
We can also add 3 types of chemicals to the batteries: Corrosive, Inorganic and Flammable.
We will then get a final product that looks something like this:
As you can see, we can create a myriad designs of battery that have different purposes. Some for phones, watches, cars etc.
To test the battery's functionality, we can test it using this device (which also we don't really know the name):
We must plug in crocodile clips to the cathodes and anodes of the battery to measure the current and voltage so as to see how well the battery performs and see if it can be implemented in the long-run.
And that's it! Our journey ends here with batteries and next week, Xuan Wei and I (Sanraj) tackle drug coating. YAY!
Jun Yang & Ying Li's experience (week1 drug coating):
Today our mentor had to go to NUS for certain matters so he assigned both of us the task of reading up on the research papers he had sent us previously and get to know about:
1) The current complications of the ureteral stent
2) Emerging technologies of the ureteral stent
From what the both of us read up on, we got to know about a few things.
In summary, The current complications of the ureteral stent consists of encrustation, infection, pain and discomfort caused by ureteral tissue irritation and possibly irregular peristalsis. Stent migration and failure due to external compression by malignancies/restenosis can also occur, albeit less frequently. Even though all of this sounded so chim to us, we tried our best and barely pulled through haha.
Secondly, the emerging technologies of the ureteral stent.
The ureteral stent in short is an important urological tool to aid in upper urinary tract drainage. However due to the complications it can cause as stated above, we know that it can cause serious patient morbidity and hence development to its' technology is still needed. From the research paper, ideal stents are easy to maneuver, radiopaque and affordable and this ideal stent does not exist as of yet. Currently, new coatings and stent materials have been designed to alter stent surfaces such that crystal adherence, bacterial adherence and encrustation are prevented. People are now aiming to make lighter, stronger and more bio-compatible technology as new bio-materials, coatings and drug-eluting stents have been designed i an attempt to reduce bio-film formation and subsequent infection and encrustation. As we have read the research papers, we have also found out that silver-nitrate coated stents have been used and shown to prevent the adherence of certain things and similarly coated ureteral stents are being developed and will emerge in the future. Also, we got to know that a promising and exciting future development is in the works as a tubular stent made of a polyglycolic acid mesh-coated scaffold upon which bovine chondrocytes were seeded and grown.
We also learnt that one of the main concerns that scientists and doctors have to deal with is the comfort of the patients. Ureteral stents can cause great discomfort and pain for the patients and as such much resources have been put to improve the comfort levels of the patients. If the stents cause great pain and suffering patients may be unwilling to have this stent put inside them, rendering all the new technological advancements useless. As such when designing such products, we have to keep in mind whom we are designing the products for. And as for this case comfort would be a large factor that we have to keep in mind.
All of the above may sound damn complicated but actually they are quite interesting. So many different terms for different things such as materials to learn in the future.
Even though we did not get to do any lab work today, we are both glad that we got to learn more and more.
On this last day here before meeting our new mentor for next week, we have both realised that we have learnt alot from our mentor. Be it about his field of research or about research work and the facilities in general. We learnt that being a researcher is not as simple as going to the lab every day and conducting experiments everyday. It involves alot of careful planning and thought before each experiment, and much work still needs to be done after the experiment in analysing the data and following up on it. After just 5 days of being here and having learnt a lot already, we are still excited to learn more about material science and research work in the following week. See you then!
On a side note, our mentor sent us some pictures from NUS as well!
Sanraj's and Xuan Wei's experience (week 1 Batteries):
Today, we finally got view how to make other types of batteries such as the batteries that ran on aluminium and copper foils. Yesterday, the fume hood's glass panel shattered so we were not able to view how the batteries were made. Hence today, our mentor assigned one of his graduate students to take us under his wings and show us how the battery was made.
On the left is an example of a battery that can be bendable. It is mostly used in phones and tablets where its small size and volume can fully function the phone and tablet to its maximum potential.
To make this battery, we must use 2 types of foils: Aluminum and Copper.
The darker-bronze coloured foil is the copper foil
The shinier foil is the aluminium foil.
We must then place the electrolyte and Lithium and graphite between these 2 foils. To do so, we must paint the foils with a paste.
Using this paste, we are able to stick the Lithium and Graphite to the foils without them falling.
This is what the paste looks like after it has been pasted and dried using a vacuum cupboard.
There are different types of pastes as we can see here and all have different purposes.
Next we place all the materials together using this equipment (don't quite know what is the actual name for it) which creates a vacuum inside a small tube. It allows us to put all the content for the building of the battery into the tube that can ultimately be transferred into a glove box for the making of the battery in an Argon-only environment.
We can also add 3 types of chemicals to the batteries: Corrosive, Inorganic and Flammable.
 |
| Corrosive acids |
 |
| Flammable organic chemicals |
 |
| Inorganic chemicals |
We will then get a final product that looks something like this:
As you can see, we can create a myriad designs of battery that have different purposes. Some for phones, watches, cars etc.
To test the battery's functionality, we can test it using this device (which also we don't really know the name):
We must plug in crocodile clips to the cathodes and anodes of the battery to measure the current and voltage so as to see how well the battery performs and see if it can be implemented in the long-run.
And that's it! Our journey ends here with batteries and next week, Xuan Wei and I (Sanraj) tackle drug coating. YAY!
Jun Yang & Ying Li's experience (week1 drug coating):
Today our mentor had to go to NUS for certain matters so he assigned both of us the task of reading up on the research papers he had sent us previously and get to know about:
1) The current complications of the ureteral stent
2) Emerging technologies of the ureteral stent
From what the both of us read up on, we got to know about a few things.
In summary, The current complications of the ureteral stent consists of encrustation, infection, pain and discomfort caused by ureteral tissue irritation and possibly irregular peristalsis. Stent migration and failure due to external compression by malignancies/restenosis can also occur, albeit less frequently. Even though all of this sounded so chim to us, we tried our best and barely pulled through haha.
Secondly, the emerging technologies of the ureteral stent.
The ureteral stent in short is an important urological tool to aid in upper urinary tract drainage. However due to the complications it can cause as stated above, we know that it can cause serious patient morbidity and hence development to its' technology is still needed. From the research paper, ideal stents are easy to maneuver, radiopaque and affordable and this ideal stent does not exist as of yet. Currently, new coatings and stent materials have been designed to alter stent surfaces such that crystal adherence, bacterial adherence and encrustation are prevented. People are now aiming to make lighter, stronger and more bio-compatible technology as new bio-materials, coatings and drug-eluting stents have been designed i an attempt to reduce bio-film formation and subsequent infection and encrustation. As we have read the research papers, we have also found out that silver-nitrate coated stents have been used and shown to prevent the adherence of certain things and similarly coated ureteral stents are being developed and will emerge in the future. Also, we got to know that a promising and exciting future development is in the works as a tubular stent made of a polyglycolic acid mesh-coated scaffold upon which bovine chondrocytes were seeded and grown.
We also learnt that one of the main concerns that scientists and doctors have to deal with is the comfort of the patients. Ureteral stents can cause great discomfort and pain for the patients and as such much resources have been put to improve the comfort levels of the patients. If the stents cause great pain and suffering patients may be unwilling to have this stent put inside them, rendering all the new technological advancements useless. As such when designing such products, we have to keep in mind whom we are designing the products for. And as for this case comfort would be a large factor that we have to keep in mind.
All of the above may sound damn complicated but actually they are quite interesting. So many different terms for different things such as materials to learn in the future.
Even though we did not get to do any lab work today, we are both glad that we got to learn more and more.
On this last day here before meeting our new mentor for next week, we have both realised that we have learnt alot from our mentor. Be it about his field of research or about research work and the facilities in general. We learnt that being a researcher is not as simple as going to the lab every day and conducting experiments everyday. It involves alot of careful planning and thought before each experiment, and much work still needs to be done after the experiment in analysing the data and following up on it. After just 5 days of being here and having learnt a lot already, we are still excited to learn more about material science and research work in the following week. See you then!
On a side note, our mentor sent us some pictures from NUS as well!
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