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The University of Illinois at Chicago Chemistry Department has a full-service NMR Facility under the direction of Dan McElheny. This page contains an overview of the Facility, access and training issues, and the instruments themselves. If you would like more information about the Facility, please click on the choices listed in the menu above.

Facility Overview

The Chemistry Department NMR Facility currently has six NMR Spectrometers: a new Bruker AV-500, a Bruker Avance DRX-500, a Bruker Avance DPX-400, a Bruker AM-400, a Varian Mercury-Vx-300 and a recently-acquired Varian Gemini-2300. These spectrometers have standard-bore magnets and are (primarily) solution-state spectrometers, although our Bruker DRX-500 and AM-400 machines do support some solid-state experiments, including CP-MAS. All instruments are fully broadbanded and have variable-temperature capability. The instrument configurations are presented on the instruments page. If you would like to get a further description and see pictures of an instrument, go to the instruments page. For off-line NMR data processing we have a Silicon Graphics O2 (R5200) workstation equipped with Bruker's XWinNMR software, and a Pentium-III PC (667 MHz.) equipped with NUTS-2D.

Access to and Use of the Facility

Our NMR spectrometers and computers are located as follows:

Bruker Avance spectrometers: room 113 of the RRC East laboratories, in the SES building;

Bruker AM-400: room 4130 SES building;

Bruker AV-500, Varian Mercury-Vx- and Gemini-300's: room 2210 SEL building;

Silicon Graphics O2: room 113 of the RRC East laboratories, in the SES building;

Pentium-III PC: room 4114 SES building (Departmental Computational Facility).

The NMR Facility is operated as an open access facility, such that any UIC Chemistry Department student or employee may use the equipment. Typically, most individuals operate the spectrometer(s) themselves, after appropriate training is received and the individual is checked out by Facility personnel. Training arrangements are different depending upon the spectrometers in question.

For the new Bruker Avance spectrometers, we are using the "Group Expert" approach for training, whereby one or more students in each research group is given special training in the use of the spectrometers with the understanding that these students will then train other students within their research group. After this training is completed, the new users are then given a checkout exam by Dan McElheny. This is presented in more detail on the instrument pages for the Avance spectrometers. Note that the spectrometer time used for training is charged to the research group. It is also assumed that in general those who want to use the Avance spectrometers will already be checked out to use the older Bruker spectrometers.

For the older Bruker spectrometers and the Varian 300's, training may be obtained from Facility personnel directly, or from another individual in the same research group, who has already been checked out to use the spectrometer(s). In this case the spectrometer time used for training is not charged to the research groups. If you intend to use the spectrometer(s) yourself, please contact Dan McElheny or the NMR Facility Student Assistants for assistance.

Regardless of which instruments you want to use, you should see the following pages for relevant information:
1) Policies
2) Training Material

NMR Service

If you need to have samples or a specific experiment run for you, and you do not wish to invest the time required to get trained and checked out or to learn the specific procedure, you may request that NMR Facility personnel run the samples or experiment for you. To do this, please contact Dan McElheny or the NMR Facility Student Assistants. A good example of the use of this service is e.g. the individual who needs one or two 2D experiments run on a particular compound. In this case, depending upon the needs or interests of the individual, it could be more efficient to have Facility staff obtain the 2D spectra than for the person to take the time required to learn how to run and process the spectra. There is a surcharge for NMR service work. For more details on charges, please see the Charges page.

NMR Service also is available to the rest of the UIC community as well as to other universities and to businesses. We can perform a wide variety of 1D, 2D and 3D experiments, multinuclear and variable temperature work, and some solid-state NMR experiments. If you have a need for NMR service, please contact Dan McElheny.