Week four: Platinum modifications

This week consisted of testing, more testing, and lots of data analysis. Unfortunately most of the week provided results and conclusions I neither expected or wanted. As the fourth week comes to a close, the biggest thing my data has taught me so far is the nature of science: It’s never what you want it to be.

On Monday I looked at pieces of titanium dioxide with the palladium I deposited the previous week under a microscope to see if there was a visible difference between it and the bare TiO2. Although the microscope pictures provided interesting information on the inconsistencies of the bare titanium dioxide, it was not conclusive enough to determine if the deposition was effective. Yet while running tests under the solar simulator, I observed a visible color difference between the modified and bare pieces.

After running tests with the solar simulator and modified and bare TiO2, one trial with Caffeine and another trial with blue dye as a model contaminant, I found that the pieces modified with palladium actually were less effective in degrading my model contaminants.

After pouring over mounds of literature a few weeks ago, platinum, not palladium, seemed the most effective, and researched, surface modification. Extra palladium happened to be in the lab, but on Thursday I was able to begin testing platinum. I photodeposited the platinum on titanium dioxide for different time lengths and tested it under the solar simulator with Caffeine. Each time length provided a less effective degradation than the bare titanium dioxide. Although my data was cleaner and readable than the past, a less effective degradation will not help Puralytics’ water purification device.

My hypothesis for this effect of platinum on the degradation of my model contaminant is that either too much was deposited or the deposited platinum is not in the correct valence state. I plan to try different deposition times and more trials under the solar simulator. Although my data wasn’t what I desired, the week was still productive, if only to collect data on what not to put in the water purification device

-Katie