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Welcome to the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry NMR facility

We provide NMR analytical chemistry services to:

  • Research workers within the department
  • Research workers in other University departments
  • External customers (Unfortunately the NMR Facility team have reached full capacity and we are not taking on any new customers at present.)

Equipment

  • 12 high field superconducting magnet systems, with associated hardware, enabling a wide variety of experiments at various field strengths 
  • There is a separate Solid State NMR facility for the group of Professor Clare Grey  (more information available at the Grey Research Group website)

For more information about the individual instruments and their capabilities, go to the NMR Spectrometers page.

Services and supplies

  • A large range of deuterated solvents and NMR tubes are available to vend from our new Merck vending machine in B25
  • Other solvents and chemicals of use in NMR spectroscopy can be obtained from the team in B28
  • Assistance with basic interpretation of results
  • Tips on how to process your spectra to get the best results
  • Help with TopSpin, planning experiments, setting up the spectrometers, modifying pulse programs, automation, DOSY, NUS, Slice Selective NMR, VT, Kinetics, and much more

TopSpin 4.x is now supplied free by Bruker for academic use. New members of the department wishing to get a copy of TopSpin for themselves should see the instructions available below for getting it installed and using it to process your spectra. We recommend that all users of the NMR facilities view their spectra on a computer in order to extract the most information.

Installation guide for installing the latest version of Bruker's software TopSpin 4.x  - TopSpin 4.x installation guide - March 26th 2020

Processing with TopSpin, written by Duncan - https://www.ch.cam.ac.uk/analytical/nmr/files/topspin-processing-2016-10-31-handouta.pdf

A Spectrometer Comparison Chart for 2024 can be found at the bottom of the drop down Spectrometers menu - please consult this to ascertain your best route for getting your NMR results!

We are generally always busy, with a lot of samples in the in-tray.  You may receive an email with your data enclosed before your spectra have been checked and your sample is returned.  If you have checked your data personally and are happy with the results please inform us, and we will put your NMR sample tube out to be collected.

As a rule we DO NOT print the spectra out because most of our users are happy with the electronic data, and we have minimised the amount of paper used in the facility.  If you have a reason for requiring the spectra to be printed please inform us by email, on the submission form or by telephoning the NMR team.

Contact us

For more information on what the spectrometers might do for you, please contact one of the NMR Facility staff:

Or email all the NMR team at once using nmr@ch.cam.ac.uk

Email sample submission forms to nmr-submission@ch.cam.ac.uk for all users.

Email consumables requisition forms to nmr-consumables@ch.cam.ac.uk for anything not stocked in the Merck vending machine in B25.

You can find more information about the NMR Facility staff members here. If you have questions about any aspect of the NMR Facility, email nmr@ch.cam.ac.uk or phone 36397. We can usually be found in Room B28 in the basement NMR corridor but we will restrict the number of people in the room until the pandemic ends.

We have a twitter account - @camnmrservice - https://twitter.com/camnmrservice/  We will use this for status updates, important news and chat (which as it is French for cat also includes cats!!) as we don't take ourselves too seriously!  We look forward to receiving your tweets and likes!

Useful Information

700MHz Arran working in open-access mode both in the daytime and overnight, but also available for trained user bookings. Please see Sticky Notes on NMRKiosk PC screen when this is taking place. The queue should automatically restart once the user has finished.

Laphroaig is working well in its new room B22 although it remains in operation for 1H/19F observe experiments only.

Glenlivet at 500MHz in B19 near the helium bag is also available for open-access NMR 1H observe experiments for extra capacity. This is also the default instrument for the teaching classes to use.

Please see our "How to use the NMR Facility" page available by clicking the tab at the top of this website for full details and information, including our updated NMR Users Guide, all relevant documents and forms for new starters and lots of helpful information to get you up and running!

You MUST submit a signed and dated copy of our NMR Risk Assessment form by email before you can use ANY of our instruments.

The analytical backup server has all the NMR data you need on it, as well as useful files and software. Full instructions on how to connect to our "NMRarchives" and "NMRrecent" shares are available on the Data page.

2024 Highlight

The Helium Recovery system is a major project that will save money and be a sustainable development that the department can be proud of. We have now been operating it for 6 months and although there have been a lot of teething troubles we are very happy with the overall performance. Our helium costs are considerably reduced, and the purity of the gas we return to Physics is very high, leading to an excellent buy back price for liquid litres. We have developed an efficient process for the return of the multi-cylinder packs (MCPs) on the Physics liquefaction plant van and this takes place approximately twice a week, unless there have been a lot of helium fills.

Improving Automation

Automated test procedures that can be run quite frequently are now routinely deployed on the automated systems. These utilise the POISE routine as modified by Duncan to detect a number of different issues with the spectrometer hardware before they become apparent to users. This will be a major step forward in preventative maintenance to improve the reliability of the open-access NMR instruments. Duncan has also modified the automation program to report via email to our address when there are issues with the open-access instruments, and give useful information about fault patterns or if manual intervention is required. We are now extracting useful information from the logs that are created in order to send informative messages to users about problems that may have affected their sample/spectra. For example if a sample fails to tune, they will get a message telling them to check it is not too salty/conductive, use a medium walled tube etc. This has cut down the number of enquiries as to "why my sample did not work".

Future Plans

More video training guides will be produced to aid trained users carry out advanced experiments themselves once Andrew has more time. Setting up DOSY experiments and multiple water suppression techniques are just two areas to be covered. Other website improvements will start to be implemented to allow users to find more information and training resources without having to ask the NMR Facility team. This has proved almost impossible in the last two years due to family matters which have necessitated a considerable amount of working from home.

The NMR team continue to liaise with the Senior Management Team in Chemistry to develop their medium term plan for instrument upgrades and infrastructure changes in advance of a possible EPSRC call for funding. We failed to be shortlisted for an upgrade to our service 400MHz Cragganmore, which was lacking both a working sample changer and a modern probe, so we have deployed the 16 position SampleXpress Lite from Glengrant in order to maximise the automation potential of Cragganmore which is required with the large number of external customer samples.

Forms

Submission forms to submit samples for the NMR Service from January 2023 are available for downloading:

Consumables requisition forms for withdrawal of specialised deuterated solvents and tubes/caps from October 2022 are available for downloading below (note that most common solvents, tubes and tube caps are available in the vending machine):

Current NMR specific risk assessment for downloading, signing and return:

Before any research worker (including Part III students) uses any of our facility rooms they must download, read, sign and date, then return the risk assessment (preferably as a PDF) to nmr@ch.cam.ac.uk. Please contact us on that email address if you have any questions or comments about this.