For the past year I’ve been working on the synthesis of nanoparticles. In order to understand this type of science, I had to learn how to use several instruments such as the fluorimeter and the spectrophotometer. These instrumens give imortant information of the structure and behavior of the nanoparticle and how it changes as I make changes in the procedure of the synthesis. In my case, the nanoparticles are functionalized with Ca ions. As expected, there was a change in the results of absorbance gathered of the nanoparticle itself and when functionalized. This is due to an interaction between the nanoparticle and the Ca ions. It also resulted that gathered fluorescence data changed as the concentration of ions increased. The exitation of the nanoparticle was in a different peak because of its interaction with Ca ions. Both of this results were important because it gave us relevant information such as the specific change in the absorbance and fluorescence. This shows that there is a possibility that if the functionalized nanoparticle interacts with troponin (a Ca binding protein related to heart attacks), it will also give specific changes in the absorbance and fluorescence data, making it a great bio-sensor. If I have to rate myself, I would make a 5/5 in the spectrophotometer and a 4/5 in the fluorimeter. At the beginning, I found it hard to work with these instruments because of their complexity, but with a lot of practice I got to manage them. Most importantly, you have to understand the data gathered in order to have fun with it.
Kept up the good work!