After taking the advice, I became a top student.

At the end of the laboratory corridor in the School of Chemistry, Chengdu University of Science and Technology.

Chen Mo stood at the door, his white coat two sizes too big, the sleeves rolled up three times, and the nitrile gloves from the glove box looked like a child wearing adult shoes on his hands.

He held in his hand a lab notebook with a kraft paper cover, the edges of which were already curled. It was a gift from Deng Songyuan. On the title page was a motto handwritten by Deng Songyuan himself: "If you don't record it, it's as if it never happened."

"Come in." Deng Songyuan was already inside, adjusting a vacuum drying chamber.

The laboratory is small, but it is fully equipped.

The fume hood whirred, the electronic balance lay on the shockproof platform, and next to it was a row of colorful reagent bottles.

A tubular furnace sits on a table against the wall, its silvery-white exterior reflecting a cold light under the fluorescent lamp.

"First, you must learn to respect experiments."

Deng Songyuan turned around, his expression no longer as irritable as in class, but rather with a rare solemnity. "Chemistry experiments are not like doing practice problems. If you make a mistake in a practice problem, you can correct it. But if you make a mistake in an experiment, you waste reagents, you waste time, and sometimes you can even break down the equipment."

"Most importantly, it poses safety risks!"

Chen Mo nodded.

Deng Songyuan handed over a pair of goggles and a pair of nitrile gloves. "Put these on first. Make sure the goggles cover your eyes. Don't worry about how ugly they look; you don't want acid splashing into your eyes, do you?"

Chen Mo obediently put it on.

The goggles are making my nose bridge hurt a little.

"Come on, let's learn the most basic thing first: pipetting."

Deng Songyuan picked up a pipette and demonstrated writing with the ease of writing with chalk: "This is a 1000μL pipette, with a maximum volume of one milliliter. You see, set the scale, attach the tip, press the first setting, aspirate, and then press the second setting to dissipate. Try it out."

Chen Mo reached out to grab it, but his fingers didn't know how to grip it, so he squeezed the pipette like a hammer.

"No, that's not how it works. Hook your fingers here and press with your thumb, like holding a pen."

Deng Songyuan was both amused and exasperated. "Haven't you ever cooked at home? How did you manage to hold that soy sauce bottle like that?"

Chen Mo had never cooked before.

But even if he'd never seen a pig run, he'd at least eaten pork. He adjusted his posture and finally managed to make it look decent.

He tried sucking up a tube of deionized water and slowly draining it into a beaker.

My hand was trembling slightly, and a drop of water clung to the tip of the gun.

"When draining the liquid, you should stay close to the container wall and let the liquid flow down the wall."

Deng Songyuan watched from the side, wishing he could do it himself. "Also, when suctioning the liquid, the nozzle should be submerged below the liquid surface, but not too deep, otherwise it will suck out the liquid..."

Pipette, drain, adhere to the wall, and do not generate air bubbles.

It took Chen Mo several minutes of practice to barely manage to keep his hand steady and prevent the liquid from dripping during a simple pipetting operation.

"It's alright," Deng Songyuan gave a barely acceptable assessment.

But he nodded to himself, recalling how the first time he used a pipette, he spilled a tube of concentrated sulfuric acid onto the lab table and almost burned his pants.

"The color is just right."

Deng Songyuan came over and took a look. "Let's go, let's do an XRD test."

The X-ray diffractometer hummed, and rows of diffraction peaks slowly appeared on the computer screen.

Chen Mo stared at the screen. Although he couldn't read music yet, he sensed something was wrong from Deng Songyuan's gradually furrowed brows.

"The peak position is correct, but the half-width is too large."

Deng Songyuan pointed to the spectrum and said, "This indicates that the crystallinity is insufficient or the crystal size is too small. Look at this; there are a few impurity peaks, which may be unreacted terephthalic acid."

"What should we do then?" Chen Mo asked.

"Adjust the parameters: temperature, time, pH, try them one by one." Deng Songyuan wrote a few lines of modification suggestions in his notebook. "Go back and check the literature to see how others make high-crystallinity MIL-101."

They spent the next few days in the lab.

In the second synthesis, the temperature was increased to 180 degrees and the time was extended to 36 hours. The peak shape of the XRD was better, but the impurity peaks were still present.

The third adjustment was made to the ratio of precursors, changing the molar ratio of terephthalic acid to chromium salt from 1:1 to 1.2:1.

The crystallinity was significantly improved, and impurity peaks almost disappeared.

"This time it's okay." Deng Songyuan finally nodded.