Research
Accelerated Materials Lab for Sustainability
Undergraduate Researcher, June 2022 — January 2024
Scope & Archerfish System
The Archerfish, developed within AMLS, is a modified 3D printer that fabricates gradients of liquid solar cell precursor materials with two or more components. Samples made with Archerfish go through a series of data collection stages, including hyperspectral imaging, x-ray spectroscopy, and degradation analysis. Archerfish had already been created when I arrived; I helped improve the system by writing microcontroller code to control the motors that delivered materials to the nozzle via peristaltic pumps and working with one of the engineers in the lab to brainstorm and design new deposition methods. I also helped automate the overall fabricate-analyze-optimize process, removing the human element from the hyperspectral imaging data collection. I performed literature reviews, both to get up to speed on the chemistry side of the projects and to find similar research from which we could learn, and I was a part of many lab-wide ideation sessions, generating ideas to improve existing AMLS projects and also helping the lab come up with new research goals. Finally, I helped service and maintain existing devices in the lab, for example the degradation chamber which subjected the samples to controlled humidity and simulated solar rays.
Interdisciplinary Communication
AMLS researchers cross the boundaries between disciplines, incorporating elements of automation, mechanical design, materials science, chemistry, fluid mechanics, and machine learning. Though I didn’t directly use all of these subjects in my time, I communicated with researchers and engineers all across the spectrum of expertise in these areas, a skill that is and will always be very valuable to me. I also interacted with professionals from organizations such as Universal Robots and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who worked with our lab for days or weeks over the summers I was there to facilitate and consult on our research. I also experienced the commitment of being in a lab, and indeed being in a goal-driven engineering environment at all, as research in AMLS was my first paid work as an MIT student. AMLS was extremely valuable to me early on in my engineering journey and I’m honored to be a part of a publication alongside my peers and mentors in the lab.
Skills: Literature review, design, CAD (Solidworks), C++, Python, fluid dynamics, system integration, problem solving, communication, research, prototyping