So Lab

02/11/2025

What better way to celebrate International Day of Women and Girls in Science than feature the women in our lab in "How to Be a Battery Researcher" with Chico State's President Steve Perez? Thanks to California State University, Chico for this fun collaboration! 👏 https://shorturl.at/Zc7P6

02/23/2024

Check out our lab’s latest work on guest-host interactions in MOFs, featured on the front cover at
Journal of Materials Chemistry! Thanks again to National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Department of Energy, Dreyfus Foundation, Berkeley Lab, Sandia National Labs, & California State University, Chico for supporting this work! Article is free to read for the next 6 weeks, so feel free to review and re-share if you're interested!

Issue 8 of JMC C is now out! This front cover is from Monica C. So et al.

"From insulator to semiconductor: effect of host–guest interactions on charge transport in M-MOF-74 metal–organic frameworks"

Read more here: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2024/tc/d3tc04155g

10/23/2023

Happy Mole Day, all! Check out our group's latest work on using online escape rooms to evaluate student proficiency in analyzing materials characterization data. Email me if you're interested in playing the online escape rooms. Thanks, National Science Foundation (NSF) and California State University, Chico for the support, as well as So Lab alumnae (Angel Cash, Julia Penick, Celia Todd) for the hard work!

Summative lab assessments probe student mastery over concepts, but conventional ones often result in decreased student engagement and confidence. If conventional summative lab assessments are replaced by accessible gamified evaluations, such as online escape rooms, this leads to improved student eng...

10/10/2022

In honor of the nanometer scale (10^-9, or a billionth of a meter), the So Lab undergrad students capture a series of SEM images of nanostructures for National Nanotechnology Day (10/9). Enjoy!

1. Mucor hyemalis - a fungus found in unspoiled food, the surface presents several functional groups useful as an inexpensive biotic substrate on its ~10,000 nm wide framework (PC: Angel Cash)

2. Carbon particles (CNPs) - formed from burning or overheating bread, CNPs are roughly 2000-4000 nm in diameter and are electrically conductive. (PC: Preston Lawson)

3. Silver nanowires (AgNW) - these 150 nm diameter wires are transparent and can be used as electrodes on semitransparent devices! (PC: Julia Penick)

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05/19/2022

Congrats to So Lab alum (Celia Todd) and current member (Carlos Melchor), for their hard work during the pandemic! This work in J. Chem. Educ. highlights how we can program nanosponges, called metal-organic frameworks, to remove persistent organic pollutants in the upper division undergraduate physical/inorganic/materials chemistry laboratory! Please read and share with interested instructors! https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c00115

An integrated laboratory experience using metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), a nanoporous and crystalline extended solid material composed of metal cations and organic linkers, was developed and adopted for upper-division, major-level chemistry and biochemistry students. In this laboratory, students...

03/15/2022

Ever wonder what the So Lab works on? Then, listen to what Carlos, Nick, and Monica have to say in the first 26 mins of this podcast on Blue Dot by North State Public Radio (NPR-affiliated public radio broadcaster) to tackle sustainability challenges. [The latter half of the podcast features cool water quality research by my coworkers, Sandrine Matiasek and Jack Webster!]

Host Dave returns to his alma mater, CSU Chico, to find out about some of the research being done by Chemistry and Environmental Science students.

09/02/2021

Well, it's official! Many thanks, National Science Foundation (NSF), for funding the So Lab at California State University, Chico to work on tunable hybrid materials for studying charge transport and development of remotely accessible lab curriculum and STEM outreach for underrepresented minorities, first-generation college students, and women!

06/09/2021

The So Lab is thrilled to be part of STEM-NET Faculty Fellows! We'll promote multi-campus collaborative projects in both education and research within California State University, Chico and across CSU system. These efforts will also attract, retain, and empower the next generation of innovative and diverse workforce. https://www2.calstate.edu/impact-of-the-csu/research/stem-net/Pages/faculty-fellows-archive.aspx #21-22-fellows

06/04/2021

After over a year of steadfast work and revisions during the pandemic, we finally published our findings in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces! Congrats to So Lab alum, Sungwon Yoon, and many thanks to our collaborators at Sandia National Laboratories, Cambridge, Oxford, and University of Oregon! This work highlights how we can program nanosponges, called metal-organic frameworks, to be more efficient charge transport materials in electronic devices!

An intriguing new class of two-dimensional (2D) materials based on metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) has recently been developed that displays electrical conductivity, a rarity among these nanoporous materials. The emergence of conducting MOFs raises questions about their fundamental electronic prop...

05/27/2021

To new beginnings for these Chico State wildcats! Celia is off to a PhD program in chemistry at UC Santa Cruz in September 2021! Susie is the first in her family to graduate from college and will be applying for med school! 🥳 Congrats! PC: Jason Halley