NMR Facilities for the School of Chemistry of the University of Manchester

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is our main way of identifying new chemical substances, and is an essential tool for modern chemistry. Provision of new NMR equipment will support research at the forefront of modern chemistry in diverse areas such as: development of NMR techniques (Morris); synthetic organic chemistry (Thomas, Clayden, Sutherland, Dixon, Procter); synthetic inorganic chemistry (Winpenny, Collison, Heath, McInnes, Faulkner, Coe); organic materials (Turner, Yeates, Skabara); mesoporous materials (Anderson). Goals include making the smallest possible magnets - individual molecules in which many electrons line up in parallel - for storage and processing of information; new NMR methods for analysing mixtures, for detecting brain damage in stroke patients, and for studying biomolecules; new synthetic organic chemistry designed to give us, amongst many other things, improved antibiotics and other drugs; studies of the molecular origin of life, and of the ways in which enzymes speed chemical reactions; designing and making new porous inorganic materials for fuel cells and environmentally-friendly catalysts; making molecules whose properties are changed by light, to make more efficient fuel cells; and measuring NMR spectra in solids to learn about the active sites in solid catalysts, gas sensors, and systems for cleaning waste water and nuclear effluent.