Finally doing research again

I'll start posting again now that I'm in my grad lab.

4.17.23

So I'm trying the same reaction with another EWG to hopefully get the same cyclization reaction to happen. Unfortunately there was some impurity in my starting material and I'm really concerned that it messed up the reaction but I'll find out tomorrow.

4.17.23

Currently working on my shit show of a research poster for a symposium Thursday, and I'm hoping to finish it tonight. It'll be fun to present though. I've been incredibly productive recently so that's nice.

27-03-22

a guide to the pomodoro method

here's a guide to the pomodoro method for people who struggle with time management :) the full article can be found on my blog here!!!

4.13.23

The cyclization worked!!!! For once it worked! we used a different diazo starter so maybe that's what did it but I'm really happy about it working. The column was a little ridiculous though. If you're interested, the top spot on the TLC plate is the product, and the bottom is the starting material. There's still some left, but very little.

4.11.23

The process of drying down my product from last week, and it turned out to be a pretty clean product with a good yield. The Rh catalyzed reaction from the α-diazo-β-ketocarbonyl works typically really well, but I don't really need to intermediate as much as I need to indole to form, and very few of the reactions have worked.

4.7.23

So this is my column to separate the product from the last post. It took over 100 test tubes to get my product out, and the product had several byproducts so I had to be careful not to get those either. In the end I got a pretty good amount of product. Hopefully my ring closure reaction will actually work for this, but I don't have a lot of hope.

4.4.2023

This is my typical experiment set up for a the reaction that I've been working on. I try and stay as organized as possible since things get easily misplaced. This reaction was a cycloaddition reaction with a diazo compound, and the diazo was a pretty orange material I'm so sad I had to react it. I also keep small vials with a little dissolved reactants in it to check the progress of my reaction using TLC. This reaction worked alright, but had 4 different spots and it was a little frustrating to have so many byproducts.

3.23.23

I've been so busy lately and dissatisfied with my work

I'll get back to posting soon. I've been sick for 2 weeks.

2.21.23

So one of my reactions didn't work. It had a ton of starting material left over, so I left it to react longer and I'll take a look at it tomorrow. If there's still a lot of starting material I'll scrap it. Last time my triphenylacetate catalyst worked really well but this time I guess the starting material didn't work the best. My other rhodium catalyst worked kind of ok. You can see them on the TLC plate but they're both super spotty and just not really ideal. I was a little disappointed. Something cool I wanted to show y'all was that the black circled part of my column, where it's green, is my rhodium catalyst eluting.

2.20.23

I ran three reactions today, praying that they work. The middle reaction is me rerunning the reaction that hasn't been working, and I'm hoping that it will work. We used 10 equivalents of acid this time, so hopefully it will work. The other two reactions are more diazo reactions.

2.13.22

Sorry I haven't post in a while, I've been really busy with schoolwork. I've spent the last 2 weeks locked up in the library. Good news though I have accepted a PhD offer! So at least I know where I'll be after graduation. This reaction has worked really well, had a yield of 68%. However my last 3 reactions literally did nothing, I had to scrap them all. It's been a bit frustrating but we're trying this reaction for the last time today, otherwise I'll just move on.

2.2.23

This is my final indol products for my previous two reactions. Pretty mid yield, high 50s low 60s, and they're very slow reactions. So probably we'll need to go back and edit the procedure to make it more effective.

2.2.23

I ran a separation on my grad student's reaction, but unfortunately it just didn't work. There was a ton of starting material left, and even after letting it sit another 24 hours, it maybe went to 30% completion. It was a little frustrating but that's ok. Then I set up my own reaction. It's really similar to an indol synthesis I ran in the fall, but that reaction also didn't have great yield, so we changed the rhodium catalyst and scaled up the reaction to about 0.5g starting material. It needs to run at 0C, so I'm hoping I get a better yield this time.