National Gateway Ultrahigh Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Center

A cutting-edge ultrahigh field 1.2 GHz nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is the centerpiece of the new National Gateway Ultrahigh Field NMR Center at Ohio State's Campus Chemical Instrument Center (CCIC), which provides state-of-the-art research facilities for the entire campus in three areas: Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics.

The CCIC's 1.2 GHz NMR spectrometer, took more than ten years to develop and is the most powerful of its kind. It is the first 1.2 GHz instrument in North America. Currently, there are only six 1.2GHz NMR spectrometers in the world.

With this 1.2GHz NMR, researchers can look into molecules at an unprecedented level--reminiscent of an MRI, but at the molecular level, with a magnetic field that is more than ten times as powerful as an average MRI scanner. It will provide a plethora of new insights into diseases, new materials, and living organisms.

The state-of-the-art CCIC NMR is a campus-wide core facility that currently houses eight high resolution Bruker NMR spectrometers (600 to 850 MHz) with a range of capabilities: powerful dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) capabilities, high-sensitivity cryoprobes for biomolecular studies, high throughput sample changers for metabolomics, solid state probes for biomolecules and materials, micro-imaging and diffusion.

The facility and resources are available to all scientists within and outside Ohio State. The NMR is being funded through NSF's recent Mid-scale Research Infrastructure-1 program and adds to the already impressive array of instrumentation available at CCIC.

Within the William G. Lowrie Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, several research groups use this next-generation NMR instrument.

In the Nicholas Brunelli and Umit Ozkan research groups, the NMR will advance catalytic materials discovery work.

In the Winston Ho research group, students have used NMRs (both ¹H and ¹³C) to characterize new membrane polymers and materials. The Ho Group will continue using NMR instruments for their current research projects.

Other researchers working in the fields of biomolecular NMR of proteins and nucleic acids in solution and in the solid state, materials science, and metabolomics also have uses for the instrument.

No matter what your field of study is, the CCIC NMR Facility can help take your research to a whole new level. With high-field NMR spectroscopy you can:

Probe the active site of catalytic materials (Brunelli Research Group)
Determine atomic resolution three dimensional structures of important biological macromolecules in solution and solid state
Investigate molecular motions from picoseconds to seconds and beyond that are important for understanding their functions
Unravel the underlying mechanism of biological function from molecular to atomic level
Characterize protein-protein, protein-DNA and protein-small molecule interactions
Discover and develop of new and improved drugs
Evaluate newly synthesized small-molecules and isolated natural products
Image the porosity of materials and the mobility of trapped solvent molecules