August 10, 1999
 
To: Faculty and Staff
From: Dr. John Harwood, Director, NMR Facilities
Re: NMR Lab News
 
The purpose of this memo is to brief everyone on what has been happening recently, and what will be happening in the near future, with our NMR Facilities.
 
New NMR Lab - RRC-East
 
Our new lab in the RRC-East has been fully functional for several months now. The training system that has been set up seems to be working well, as we now have almost forty graduate students and post-docs checked out to use the spectrometers. Many users are running multinuclear and 2D experiments on these new systems. Keep in mind that with the field gradient accessories we have, many survey 2D spectra can be obtained in 10 to 20 minutes.
 
Currently, scheduling for the new spectrometers is done with paper sign-up sheets as for the older NMR's. One of our long-term plans is to implement a web-based reservation system for these spectrometers, although this may take several months given the other activities going on. Also, due to the necessity of gathering information from students to be used for setting up key card access to the RRC lab, I have been able to start an email list of individuals using the new NMR's. This is a useful way of establishing communication between myself and the NMR users.
 
Our new NMR lab has been chosen by Bruker Instruments as the location of their Midwest User's Meeting this year. We will be hosting this event on September 30th and October 1st. Typical attendance is on the order of 75 people, so this will be a nice opportunity for us to publicize our new facility. I have a program for the meeting available, so if anyone is interested in seeing it, please contact me. In addition, a few spots will be open for people from our department, so contact me if you, or any of your students, would like to attend.
 
Since we just received the funding from our NSF CRIF proposal (see below), we will soon be submitting a purchase order for some upgrades to our new Avance-500. Specifically, we will be purchasing Bruker's "Level - I" solid-state NMR accessory, which will include an CP-MAS probe, a new RF amplifier, a MAS control unit and other accessories. In addition, we were able to negotiate some other upgrades for liquids NMR, one of which is a Z-gradient upgrade for the broadband probe on the Avance-500. This new equipment should be delivered by the end of the year.
 
Proposals Funded!
 
The NMR Facility has had a good year regarding proposals. We have submitted three since last August, and all were funded. Two of the three were teaching-related, and the third was the NSF CRIF proposal mentioned earlier. For the NSF CRIF proposal, we received $75,050 (with no matching requirement) for the purchase of the solids equipment mentioned above. Thanks go to the faculty contributors to this effort: Profs. Bruzik (Med. Chem.), Crich, Frydman and Jameson.
 
The teaching proposals both involved upgrading our old Varian VXR-300S to enable it to support many different teaching laboratories. We already received $40,000 from the Dreyfus Foundation, and will get $80,000 from the NSF CCLI A&I program, for this effort. Many faculty provided input on these two proposals, but Prof. Wink deserves a special thank-you for his help and guidance with the NSF CCLI effort.
 
Varian VXR-300S Upgrade
 
The Dreyfus Foundation money and the NSF CCLI A&I funding, combined with UIC match, will be used to purchase a brand-new Varian "Mercury" console, a new computer, and a 100-sample sample-changer accessory, to replace the Varian's current VXR-S console. We also will be purchasing PC's and software for off-line NMR data processing. This upgrade will make the Varian spectrometer roughly equivalent to our new Brukers in terms of sophistication, although the Varian won't have some of the accessories the new Brukers have. However, the sample-changer and associated automation software means that this spectrometer will be capable of acquiring spectra of multiple samples without operator intervention. This capability will allow this spectrometer to provide excellent support for undergraduate teaching labs, especially organic labs. Very few institutions can offer this type of NMR capability for use in undergraduate labs. In addition, this spectrometer will still be available for research use when not committed to teaching use, and the sample-changer can also be used by researchers. Currently, we hope that this equipment will be delivered before the end of this year. Installation scheduling will not be known until after the order is placed.
 
Equipment Moves
 
The NMR labs in the 4300 quadrant will be vacated this fall in order for that space to be converted to labs for Prof. Shippy. We are planning on relocating the Bruker AM-400 and AC-200 to room 4130, which used to house the Varian 300. Even though this room is smaller than the space we currently occupy, it is of adequate size, and has the big advantage of having a supplementary air conditioning unit installed. This will help the long-term performance of these older instruments, as they sometimes are prone to overheating when the building gets warm. We will also take this opportunity to upgrade the computer monitor on the AM-400. The SMIS-300 will be decommissioned and stored awaiting re-installation elsewhere.
 
Currently we are hoping to begin this move in early September. If all goes well, M. R. Resources, a third-party company who will carry out the de-installation and re-installation of the systems, estimates that the moves can be completed within four weeks.
 
In closing, if anyone has any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to contact me.