NMR

SERVICE

The NMR facility is a major resource available to the diverse research and teaching community of the University of Texas at Austin. The facility is staffed by two NMR spectroscopists with a combined forty years of experience in the field to assist your projects with solution- and solid-state NMR measurements. Mostly self-service, the labs are open daily. They are secured nights and weekends, requiring a validated key card for access. Basic training and check-out, by NMR staff, is required before using any of the spectrometers. Additional training in advanced techniques and consultation for special projects is provided as needed.

NMR service spectra may be requested for solid-state and solution-state samples. These are run by NMR staff, on first come first-serve basis. Everyone requesting such service is welcome and encouraged to participate when the experiment is run. Please complete the Spectroscopy Request form before submitting a sample for service.

The NMR facility fee is a flat rate of $5/hour based on instrument time used (experiment setup and acquisition time).

HOURS and Location

The facility is accessible 24-hours per day for authorized users performing University research; this is limited only by the security and rules of the building and university in general. The facility is comprised of two labs located in the Norman Hackerman Building (NHB), rooms 0.230 and 5.342. The basement and fifth floors, respectively.

Facility staff are available in the labs, 9-5 daily (see below). Email, phone-text and web-chat communication is encouraged when you cannot find us.

INSTRUMENTATION

The 5^th floor lab (5.342) has three open-access 400MHz spectrometers with manual sample handling. Other operations, i.e., shimming, locking and probe tuning are fully automated. The basement lab (0.230) houses another five spectrometers, two of which are primarily for service requests (solids at 400MHz and liquids at 600MHz) and operated by staff. High power diffusion and temperature-controlled experiments are available upon request. The remaining three spectrometers are open-access. These consist of a 400MHz with sample automation, a 500MHz with manual sample handling, and a 500MHz with a high-sensitivity probe and sample automation. They also have automated shimming, locking and probe tuning.

SOFTWARE

The NMR facility uses a variety of UT-IT supported applications, all of which are freely available. MS Office365 is used extensively for content and communication. NMR time slots can be reserved using a calendar running on an IT webserver. The Department of Chemistry maintains a site license for MNOVA, a commercial class NMR software suite developed by Mestrelab Research. On-line data storage is provided under the UT-Box environment.

TRAINING

Authorized users must be trained and checked out for clearance to use the facility. The basic training requires users to read through a self-guided set of introductory material and basic operations on the 5^th floor spectrometers. This must be followed up by a formal checkout by facility staff. Additional training for the basement lab (higher-field instruments and autosamplers) and advanced techniques is available by request.