Appealing to the broad interests of students is a strong focus in the laboratory curriculum of my physical chemistry class. This experiment covers a wide variety of topics and techniques that I think students of all types and ability levels can find value in. The primary goal of this experiment is to introduce students to using coding tools in their data manipulation and calculations. Students that had their first coding experience found this laboratory challenging, but worthwhile. In this experiment, students use 3D fluorescence spectrocopy to investigate cyclodextrin host-guest complexes with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Cyclodextrins seem to be an interesting compound to students as it has a wide variety of applications in environmental work and pharmaceuticals. Students manipulate their fluorescence data in MATLAB, or similar software, and use a chemometric tool called parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) to model different components of the host-guest complex system. The output of this analysis is used to calculate equilibrium constants. Students can manipulate several equations used to describe the host-guest complex, and then use the modeling output data in a linear regression to obtain a value for the equilibrium constant for the complex. Most of the data and modeling output for this experiment can be represented visually which helps students follow and better understand what they are doing. The procedure will be presented as a relatively versatile experiment that can be performed as a wet or dry lab, and satisfy different time demands. Examples will be shown for data collection, modeling and calculations.

Using chemometric tools to investigate host-guest complexes in the physical chemistry lab

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.