Incorporating Broadband NMR into the Chemistry Curriculum

University Of Central Arkansas, Conway AR

Investigators

Abstract

Chemistry (12) The power and versatility of modern NMR spectroscopy make it an essential tool for chemists. The Department of Chemistry is adapting a variety of experiments from the research and educational literature that uses nuclear spin to obtain structural information and implementing them as discovery-based experiments. These experiments are providing the context for introducing NMR techniques in a sequence that gradually increases the difficulty of relating molecular structure to spectral information. Organic chemistry students are being introduced to NMR early in the first semester through C-13, DEPT, and HETCOR experiments, followed by the characterization an organofluorine compound, using 2-D NMR to identify an unknown ester, probing the stereospecificity of a reduction reaction using NOE, and investigating the conformational dynamics of DEET. Students in Organic Spectroscopy are characterizing non-trivial unknowns using a variety of complementary spectroscopic techniques. Students in advanced courses are investigating phosphorus-phosphorus coupling and characterizing structures of enzyme inhibitors, among other laboratory projects. These discovery-based experiments require a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer with multinuclear capability and possessing the resolution and flexibility required by such experiments. Research in a variety of areas has become an integral part of the training of our undergraduate students and the high-field NMR is finding numerous applications.