Palladium nanocubes: The first TEM image taken by myself. This was just training for colloidal synthesis and using TEM. At that moment there was no specific project related to it, but later Pd nanocubes became the core of my PhD thesis.

(Supposed to be) CeO2 octahedra: My first independent project. It lasted for only very short period of time, and all my results looked like this. I felt kind of discouraged at that moment, I was wishing my failed data at least could provide some useful information, but what I saw was literally nothing.

Pd-Cu twin cubes: These are copper cubes/bipyramids with a hexagonal/triangular palladium plate embedded inside. With the help of my senior, at the early stage I was already able to get images that carry clear information, and later I spent most of the time on exploring the growth mechanisms. I wasn't able to synthesize samples with high enough purity for further studies, but the topic itself is quite interesting in terms of crystal growth. If you want to learn more you can check out the publication here.

DNA origami rectangle: (One of) The simplest DNA origami in the world still took me half a year to make it right. I started the design from scratch, and there were many design principles that I didn't really know.  Had I followed what other paper had done exactly I probably could get the right thing much quicker, but this troubleshooting process also provided chances for me to learn  about structural DNA nanotechnology. The conclusion is I should read paper more carefully but I appreciate the half-year trail and error on such a simple topic. 

Phase transformation from Pd to PdH:  The discovery was completely an accident --  one day I saw an unexpected bump  on the blue curve on the left figure (~37 degree).  I spent a year or two afterwards to explore the mechanism: what is the bump, how does this bump changes the material properties, etc. The new discovery originally caused me a lot of worry (instead of excitement),  but my graduate PI  eventually helped me sort things out and it became my favorite project in my PhD thesis .

If you are interested, you can check out the publication here. 

Origami-nanocrystal interaction: It’s about how to let inorganic nanocrystals and DNA origami interact in a proper way, and I knew nothing about this. Other than the synthesis of nanocrystals, everything else to me was new.  The process of achieving success in this project feels a  typical pathway of doing research: started with a mess where everything was wrong, followed by troubleshooting one [by one] (repeat n times) , and eventually get the satisfying results.