This programme prepares you for all fields of chemistry. Our students can be found in a broad spectrum of diploma work placements - doing research work at LiU, drug industries or labs. Read about some of our current students' placements below.
Robert Lundberg, on diploma work placement at TEMAM
"At TEMAM, I am looking for drugs in African sea sediments with GCMSMS. Sample preparation includes freeze-drying, automatic extraction (ASE350), evaporation (Buchi), purification by silica gel chromatography and derivatization (BSTFA + TMS). The method is developed, validated and applied."
Pentti Niiranen, on diploma work placement in a research group at LiU
"My thesis is a continuation of previous research done here at IFM (Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology) where plasma electrons were used as a reducing agent for depositing metal films. What I do is in-situ studies using an QCM sensor in this CVD process. The special thing about this process is that the electrons from an argon plasma are used as reducing agents instead of another source molecule. This is done by applying a positive bias to the substrate, which in my case is an QCM sensor, which causes the plasma electrons to be drawn towards the surface. This then provides an opportunity to study what is really happening on the surface, which is important for understanding the process."
Malin Eriksson, on diploma work placement at AstraZeneca
"I am doing my master thesis at AstraZeneca in the group for Advanced Drug Delivery. In this early stage of pharmaceutical development, the analytical chemists investigate solubility and stability for various drug candidates. I will perform these experiments and determine whether there is a correlation between these properties to avoid repetitive analyzes. The samples will be analyzed with UPLC-UV-MS. As a second part of the project, I will also perform the sample preparation on a liquid handling system and validate it for implementation."
Pamburayi Mpofu, on diploma work placement in a research group at LiU
"My diploma work within material chemistry is two-fold. First I constructed (designed, built and set up) a cost-effective ALD reactor, then secondly I test experimentally if the reactor construction has been a success by depositing thin films. The second part is the more fun of the two. I'm depositing metal oxide thin films from novel metal precursors that we synthesize locally within the Pedersen Research Group and water vapor as the oxygen source. In addition, I do experimental characterization of the films using many analytical methods that we have in materials science that include XRD, XPS, SEM etc."
Huijun Zhu, on diploma work placement at Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) and LiU
"Air pollution is a critical environmental problem both now and in the coming decades. Recently, the issue of indoor air quality has received increasing attention for improving the comfort and health of building occupants. Among various indoor pollutants, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are a group of typical organic matters with adverse effects on human health.
2D nanosheets catalysts have attracted considerable research attention because of their novel properties, which have found wide applications in energy and environmental fields. Thus, my master's thesis project is to design an ultrathin two-dimensional material(NiFe-LDH) to effectively remove NO in indoor air through photocatalysis."
