Monday, August 10, 2020
By:
This will be my last blog post for the summer, as my internship has officially concluded. I spent this last week presenting my progress to a few NASA personell and plenty of SPS guests. I talked about the background of LDI mass spectrometry and the drawbacks of the dried droplet method. I then showcased my results that showed the improvements in homogeneity and spot size, and I think the presentation worked well. I got plenty of good feedback, and found out afterward that three of the top solar system researchers at Goddard showed up!
As for the experimental work I've done this week, I repeated some of my earlier tests while using a hot plate. I tested different distances from the airbrush to the stencil and found that smaller stencil holes require closer distances to get ideal spots. I also tested different solutes to make sure that the homogeneous results I got didn't only apply to rhodamine. I found that the method I was using, airbrushing over a hot plate using a stencil, also worked with organic molecules and salts.
Overall, I had a fantastic summer, and hope to keep working for NASA in the fall!
Alex Mikulich