Dominique Escandon - NJIT Lab - Week 6

Hi guys! Week 6 was pretty exciting. The beginning of the week didn't make it seem so -- we've been running low on carbon nanotubes so we spent almost a full three days making 5 carbon nanotubes (which we go through in about 4 days). On Tuesday, we had to evacuate the building because someone in the lab smelled smoke. We had to do the same thing last week (someone smelled plastic burning), so this time around I didn't get anxious at all. You can basically say I've become a pro at evacuating buildings full of explosive and flammable substances. Thankfully, it was a false alarm so Qin and I were able to get back to doing our experiments, but not before we took this picture:

On Wednesday, Dr Crider visited my lab. It was a really great feeling to talk about the experiments I had performed and what I had learned. Afterwards, Qin and I ran 4 fuel cells, all with different combinations of substances for the anode and cathode (using carbon nanotubes which had been suspended in a solution of their enzymes, then using a platinum suspension instead of laccase enzyme, then a cathode using suspended GOx and an anode using platinum, then compressed GOx with a platinum anode) but nothing lasted more than an hour which was extremely frustrating. 

Finally, on Thursday, we tried out mechanically compressing the powdered forms of laccase and GOx enzyme onto our carbon nanotubes (surrounded by a carbon sheet to sandwich effectively/ for protection of the CNT) and it worked great! We were able to get an all-time high of 163.04 uW for our power density (an all time high for our lab) and it lasted 5 days (another record for our lab). We are extremely happy with these results, but of course we are always looking for ways to make it even better. Hopefully this can be achieved in my last 2 weeks at this lab!

I'm hoping to see some broken records in these next two weeks, but if not, I am still so happy that I've been able to participate in this process and feel like I've made an impact. 

Have a great week everyone!