NDnano Summer Undergraduate Research 2016 Project Summary

My summer research has introduced me to the rewards and frustrations of working in a bioengineering lab. In Dr. Roeder’s lab, I studied the relationship between the physical and optical properties of a specific type of nanoparticles (NPs). Dr. Nallathamby taught me novel methods of synthesizing silica-gold core-shell NPs, and I gained experience in characterizing these nanoparticles. I learned how to characterize their size in the solution phase using dynamic light scattering (DLS) and in the dry phase using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and I also learned how to characterize their optical and plasmonic properties using UV-Visible spectroscopic measurements (UV-Vis).