My name is Mingyang Xie, and I am a senior student in chemistry of BNU.
When I was in my junior school, I got a gold metal in the Province Bio-Competition, which was
a result and also an encouragement to my highly interest in the field of organism. Four years of
study of chemistry gives me a fundamental and systematic foundation for the exploration of
organism. In the biochemistry class, I had a clear big picture about how does chemistry work in
the organism. I took a course called Bio-inorganic chemistry, and was the top student in the class.
Two semesters in my junior, I chose each two experiments in polymer and biochemistry in a
course called Comprehensive experiment.
I got two summer internships working in a lab of Organic Synthesis. Meanwhile, I synthesized
some small molecules with biological activities, picking the best approach through conference
review, monitor by TLC, doing post-processing such as separation, recrystallization and NMR
characterizing. My products were confirmed, and the reaction yields are all above 90%. Through
these, I realized the differences between experience courses and real research that the practicality
of reaction condition, instrument performance, and raw material costs play important roles. And
always, the pre-exploration in low-dose is as important as excellent operation.
In my junior time, I did some works about photografting of MAA onto HDPE initated by
aliphatic ketones in the field of Polymer Surface Modification. To find the optimum condition for
increasing the amount of grafting, our group proposed to change the pH values of the aqueous
system instead of using the co-solvent. We thought the solubility of initiator would be increased
by transferring into enol-state under acidic environment and the usage of co-solvent just like
ethanol could be removed. The result shows that the samples are higher grafted at the same
irradiation time, and the water absorbency of the grafted samples increased almost linearly with
the extent of grafting. However, it turns out to be too good. Calculated by Gasses, we confirms
that the initiator in enol-state under acidic environment does be more easily than the ketone
structure when transferred to the excited state, but it won’t be so effective. We suggested that
optimal pH value contributes a lot in the process of chain growth, which delays the chain
termination by changing the structure of grafted chains. Here comes the point of the difference
between polymers and small molecular compounds that sometimes the complex structure plays a
more important role instead of some stiff properties.
During the exploration above, I discovered an unexpected phenomenon of AA monomer that
under some circumstance water adsorbent of grafted layer is 100 times than the grafted weight
itself, and began my second research. The more interesting part is the differences of grafted weight
and adsorbent ability when PE pieces lie above or under the solution layer. I propose that the
mechanism of this phenomenon shares some similarities with the synthesis of hydrogel, which
supports the previous conclusion of chain-structure-determine on the other hand. I suppose that
some surface-usage just like Surface Drug Delivery could be realized as the similarity shared with
hydrogel that water-absorbent of these films is such great.
目前毕设在做纳米材料，碳纳米管，穿晶之类的内容。虽然隔得远了点，但是还是希望能
好好地做完。做工程或者高分子，最后能应用的都是材料。多做点不同的东西学习学习是一
定会有好处的。如果以后继续想弄生物方向的高分子材料，那这段时间的材料背景会给自己
很大的帮助。如果打算转工程类的，比如前段时间看到的高分子工程相关的色彩化学。我想
材料方面的实验过程也是有帮助的。虽然突然跳到了物化甚至物理感觉的东西有些吃不消
吧。嘻嘻。
At last, I will say something about my leisure time. I have doing yoga for 7 years. I love
watching the Discovery Channel which gives me a colorful view of history and science. Series just
like House, Lie to me, and Grey’s Anatomy also attract me a lot because of their logic and medical
background. Besides, I’ve written novels about 300 thousand words and made my own fanbook in
which contains fictions and drawings of mine and my friends’. I have successfully produced it
from demanding the essays to typesetting and printing in two months, and our 200 copies is
successfully sold out through my google-based learning and passion.