About the NMR Center
The "University of Oslo NMR Center" is located at the Department of Chemistry University of Oslo.
In rooms in the east wing: Ø322, 332, 334, 338 and 340
Short history
Historically the NMR activities at our Department have been divided in two parts; "Physical NMR" and "Organic NMR". The two parts have now joined forces.
Originally the "Organic NMR" laboratory serviced only the Section for Organic Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry, but has over the years grown into a multi disciplinary NMR Center. As most NMR laboratories for Organic Chemistry the laboratory housed a variety of low field instruments originally. The first spectrometer arriving was a Varian A60 instrument (1966), followed by a Varian HA100-15D instrument (1969), a Jeol FX60 instrument (1974), a Varian XL 300 instrument (1983) and finally a JEOL PMX60 spectrometer (1987). None of these instruments are in use any more. The XL-300 magnet quenched during a large dynamite blast when the Helga Engs Building was constructed at the Blindern campus. The Chemistry building was shaking heavily and it was not possible to charge the XL 300 magnet after that incident. The "Physical NMR" laboratory initially installed a Bruker CXP 200 NMR instrument in 1981. The instrument was upgraded to a DMX 200 system in 1995. The 200 MHz magnet was still alive until mid 2009 when it was shut down - while at the same time SINTEF in Oslo purchased a new solid state Bruker Avance III 500 MHz instrument. A Maran Ultra low field (0.5 T) NMR instrument intended for relaxation and diffusion studies was installed in 2003.
NMR-services
The University of Oslo NMR Center, to a large extent, still services the NMR needs for Organic Chemistry, but the Center is now also servicing research in; polymer chemistry, nuclear chemistry, organometallic chemistry, homogeneous catalysis, organic analytical chemistry, inorganic chemistry, medicinal chemistry, material- and nano science, galenic pharmacy, medicinal pharmacy, botany, natural product identification, brain metabolism research, metabolomics studies, algae toxin research, protein structure elucidation and many other research fields.
Instruments
The University of Oslo NMR Center, in additon to the DMX 200 and Maran Ultra NMR instruments mentioned above, houses the following NMR instruments: Bruker AV 600 equipped with a TCI (1H13C15N) cryo probe and a BACS 60 automatic sample changer, Bruker DRX 500, Bruker DPX 300 with a BACS 60 automatic sample changer and Bruker DPX 200 which are owned solely by the Department of Chemistry, University of Oslo. The Varian Gemini 200 instrument from 1989 is owned jointly with the School of Pharmacy, University of Oslo - which owns 25% of the instrument. The gemini 200 instrument was the first instrument to be set up as a self service instrument. Prior to this purchase an engineer was responsible to acquire and plot 1H and 13C spectra for the whole organic chemistry section. This was actually a horrible job for that person, constantly pressed to produce more and more spectra.
Professor Per Kolsaker set up the Gemini 200 instrument for self service and he has probably never got enough credit for this job. Kolsaker´s contribution in this respect to turning the NMR facility into a modern facility has regretfully largely been overlooked. The two 200 MHz instruments and the 300 MHz instrument and four processing PCs are used under open access. Part of the AV600 instrument time was originally used for hyphenated LC-MS-NMR applications, but nowadays most LC-applications are ordinary off-line LC-NMR using a fraction collector which is more time efficient than directly coupled LC-NMR. The time slots on the DRX 500 and the AV 600 instruments are distributed once a week for the coming days. In addition the laboratory houses a second 600 MHz NMR instrument, a Bruker AVII 600 instrument (with cryo probe) owned jointly by the Norwegian University of Life Sciences - UMB (22% ownership), the Norwegian School of Veterinary Sciences (22% ownership) and the University of Oslo (56% ownership) shared equally between the Department of Molecular Biosciences and the Department of Chemistry. This last instrument - also called the "Triple Alliance Instrument" is dedicated to studies of biomolecules. A steering committee of four persons administer the use and distribution of acquisition time at the AVII 600 instrument.
Please contact frode.rise[at]kjemi.uio.no if you need to perform NMR experiments in solution.