Well, another day that will go down in the history books for my own little life. Well, rather for my little research career. Yes today I finally isolated the prototypical EDEN compound, which has come to be known by me as ADAM. I had a dubious shot in the dark yesterday with a reaction which my supervisor personally said wouldn't work, and low and behold, I worked the sample up and ran the NMR, and in between the residual starting material, there it was.
I felt like a big game hunter who has searched fruitlessly for so long to track down her prey. Finally I have come upon the creature itself, and all I had to do was to work out a slightly better way of trapping my target. I put on a second reaction as soon as I could. I was much more careful this time, taking strenuous care to exclude air and moisture and using fresh reagents. I had to reflux the reaction for 1.5 hours and so I nervously paced the decks whilst that was underway. I managed to get a few other reaction completed and help with the Inorganic Lecture series.
I got back to the lab at 5:00 pm and worked the reaction up. I waited nervously for my NMR time at 6:00 pm and finally at the fated moment, success. There alone and naked on the trace stood the three majestic peaks like silent monolithic sentinels.
Aaahhhh… sweet relief. Not a fluke, not a change meeting, but perfect completion, the circle is closed, the cycle complete.
Finally, after well over 6 months of work, I finally had proof of the existence of the all E-ene linked acetylene terminated proto-dendrimer (Why do you think I call it ADAM) *s*. This molecule is not only novel in it's own right, but forms the basis of an entire series of new organometallic systems.
So, there it was. I have the reaction scheme, I have the product and I have the data. So begins a new day, now its going to be a matter of improving yields and coupling to the ligated metal center. There are 24 days until my supervisor gets back, so it depends on my being able to boost the yield so that I can couple to a range of metal centers and obtain the necessary data in time for the conference in February. Plus being able to fill a whole bunch of new orange folders. ;)
I didn't do anything else today, I woke up and got into the lab at the usual times. I came home and had pizza for dinner then had a shave and shower and then a snooze. Woke up and now I'm listening to the "Best of the 90's J-Files".
Very bored at the moment, I'll finished listening to the radio soon, and then go to bed.
Correction : I've been looking through my old diary entries, and the earliest reference I can find to my EDEN series is from 18th March. That makes it 8 months at least since I started, Wow!