Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility

Overview of Services

NMR spectroscopy is a very powerful and one of the most informative non-destructive analytical techniques. We provide services on NMR analysis, consultancy and training for internal and external customers. The full range of solution NMR experiments are offered, including routine 1- and 2D proton, carbon-13 and multinuclear experiments. Advice on experiment selection and data interpretation is also available. Together with routine NMR experiments, we offer our help in identifying unknown materials, determining chemical structures and product properties, quantifying components in a mixture, and analysing conformational and molecular dynamics.

Equipment

Sample Preparation

Our operator can prepare your samples for analysis. In this case, the cost of sample preparation and solvent are borne by the customer.

If you are preparing samples yourself, make sure that you use an NMR tube of the following dimensions: 5 mm - diameter, 7-8’’ – length. The quality of the results will be greater in you obey the following simple rules in the preparation of your sample:

1. Check that the NMR tube and cap are clean and dry.
2. Do not heat NMR tubes or store them in an oven. It is likely to distort the tube, thus affecting the magnetic field homogeneity and spectrum quality.
3. Use roughly 5 - 10 mg for 1H and 20 - 50 mg for 13C experiments depending on the nature of your product. Using higher concentrations may reduce the time for the data collection, but it may increase the viscosity of solutions leading to poor resolution.
4. Make up the sample in a small vial or test tube in the appropriate amount of solvent and transfer it into the NMR tube.
5. Solid particles, especially those in cloudy solutions, drastically reduce spectral quality. Do not use large quantities of solvent to dissolve samples, use the minimum volume and filter (either use tissue wrapped round the end of a Pasteur pipette, or filter through a Pasteur pipette plugged with a piece of tissue).
6. The total volume of the solution transferred to the NMR tube should be 0.6 - 0.7 ml. An insufficient volume of samples will result in lower quality of the results.

Do NOT use NMR tubes or caps with any sign of damage. The operator will reject samples for analysis if they are submitted in damaged tubes / caps or in case of any evidence of sample leakage.

Arrange with the operator prior to preparing sample solutions if the sample is unstable or requires special handling.

Leadership

Location and hours of operation

Contacts