6/19 AM
Following a group meeting with the RET project coordinators, we met up with our research mentors and began the project in earnest.
As mentioned in the initial post, my research project is to make the superconductor, YBa2Cu3O7 (aka YBCO or Y-123). The synthesis appears to be pretty straight forward.
The reaction is: (1/2)Y2O3 + 2BaCO3 + 3 CuO --> YBa2CuO7
This reaction as written is not balanced (something for which my students would mercilessly chastise me), but my understanding is that the carbonate is liberated as carbon dioxide gas. Also, the oxide chemistry is not something that I had significant exposure to as a student but I'll make my best attempt at explaining based on what my research mentors and Ram have said. Initially, the YBCO is oxygen deficient and often has the formula written as YBa2Cu3O7-x, meaning that there is some amount of oxygen missing. This will be fixed in the second phase of heating in an oxygen environment (termed post-annealing).
Stoichiom
etry--one of my favorite words in chemistry. It is so abrupt and strange sounding, but has the elegant meaning of simply measuring elements. I also find the coining of the term fascinating. Jeremias Richter, in his work showed how amounts of products could be predicted if the initial amounts of reactants were known. His loftier goal was to use this elegance in nature to prove the existence of God. If only my goals were so meaningful, but I'm making a hovering train which will be pretty cool-- but as yet not divinely inspired.
The point of this paragraph was to say that as we got started, we needed to determine the stoichiometric amounts necessary to produce 5.0 g of YBCO. Moments like this are probably the inspiration behind the RET program, but it was nice to perform stoichiometric calculations with an actual purpose, rather than just introducing the topic to students and modeling the process. This was real stoichiometry, using the method that I had taught only a few months earlier.
Stoichiometric Calculations: to make 5.0000 g YBCO
0.8468 g Y2O3
2.9601 g BaCO3
1.7898 g CuO
From these calculations, data will be gathered and the reactants will be prepared for the reaction conditions.
Following a group meeting with the RET project coordinators, we met up with our research mentors and began the project in earnest.
As mentioned in the initial post, my research project is to make the superconductor, YBa2Cu3O7 (aka YBCO or Y-123). The synthesis appears to be pretty straight forward.
The reaction is: (1/2)Y2O3 + 2BaCO3 + 3 CuO --> YBa2CuO7
This reaction as written is not balanced (something for which my students would mercilessly chastise me), but my understanding is that the carbonate is liberated as carbon dioxide gas. Also, the oxide chemistry is not something that I had significant exposure to as a student but I'll make my best attempt at explaining based on what my research mentors and Ram have said. Initially, the YBCO is oxygen deficient and often has the formula written as YBa2Cu3O7-x, meaning that there is some amount of oxygen missing. This will be fixed in the second phase of heating in an oxygen environment (termed post-annealing).
Stoichiom
etry--one of my favorite words in chemistry. It is so abrupt and strange sounding, but has the elegant meaning of simply measuring elements. I also find the coining of the term fascinating. Jeremias Richter, in his work showed how amounts of products could be predicted if the initial amounts of reactants were known. His loftier goal was to use this elegance in nature to prove the existence of God. If only my goals were so meaningful, but I'm making a hovering train which will be pretty cool-- but as yet not divinely inspired.The point of this paragraph was to say that as we got started, we needed to determine the stoichiometric amounts necessary to produce 5.0 g of YBCO. Moments like this are probably the inspiration behind the RET program, but it was nice to perform stoichiometric calculations with an actual purpose, rather than just introducing the topic to students and modeling the process. This was real stoichiometry, using the method that I had taught only a few months earlier.
Stoichiometric Calculations: to make 5.0000 g YBCO
0.8468 g Y2O3
2.9601 g BaCO3
1.7898 g CuO
From these calculations, data will be gathered and the reactants will be prepared for the reaction conditions.
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