Contact
Liquid state NMR
New center leader contact details will appear here before January 1st 2025.
Center leader Professor Frode Rise
Engineer Kristian Sørnes (from June 15. 2024)
History
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. The Varian Gemini 200 instrument from 1989 was owned jointly with the School of Pharmacy, University of Oslo - which owned 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.
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; pharmacy, 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.
Current Instruments
The University of Oslo NMR Center houses seven superconducting NMR instruments: one Bruker AVI600 (financed by the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at UiO, originally as an LC-NMR instrument) equipped with a TCI (1H13C15N) cryo probe and a BACS 60 sample changer, one Bruker DRX500 instrument (funded by the Research Council of Norway (RCN) in the Norwegian NMR package in 1993/1994), one Bruker AVneo400 instrument (funded by UiO centrally) equipped with an iProbe was installed in 2021. A Bruker AVII400 instrument (funded by saving commercial income over several years) with a magnet originating from Norsk Hydro at Hærøya (magnet produced in 1999) and equipped with a BACS 120 sample changer was decommissioned in 2021 due to lack of electronics spare parts. A Bruker AVIIIHD400 instrument (funded by saving commercial income over several years) was installed in March 2015. The magnet, produced in 2001, had a long life at Astra Zeneca in Södertälje before coming to Oslo. This instrument is equipped with a BACS 60 sample changer. Additionally we have two walk up instruments to be run manually: one Bruker DPX300 and one Bruker DPX200 instrument (both funded by RCN in the Norwegian NMR package in 1993/1994). A second 600 MHz NMR instrument (financed by the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at UiO), a Bruker AVII600 instrument (financed by RCN and the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at UiO) with a TCI (1H13C15N) cryo probe were decommissioned in 2023 due to a large helium consumption (165 %). This instrument was dedicated to studies of biomolecules. The last instrument is a Bruker AVIIIHD800 instrument (NNP-1 RCN investment) equipped with a TCI (1H13C15N) cryo liquids probe was installed in 2015. This instrument was converted to a Bruker AVneo800 instrument capable of performing solid state nmr experiments (NNP-2 RCN investment) in December 2023. Two regular high and low gamma solid state two channel probes were also delivered. One probe was installed in December 2023. The low gamma probe was installed in the period from April 2. through April 5. 2024. The magnet of this instrument quenched three times during installation before it was possible to charge the magnet on Friday November 27. 2015 when the magnetic coil was subcooled to a temperature of 3 Kelvin. A total of 4500 liter of liquid helium was used during all the charging processes. The total cost for the helium was at that time a modest 450.000,- NOK. When the UiO NMR Center is moving to the new Life Science Building in 2026, the instrument park will be complemented with brand new Bruker AVneo600 (NNP-2 RCN investment) instrument equipped with a three channel (+ deuterium lock) room temperature probe capable of single 1H or single 19F decoupling or simultaneous 1H and 19F decoupling while acquiring on on the tunable X channel (e.g. mostly 13C).
Please contact the scientific leader of the Center if you need to perform NMR experiments.
Liquid state NMR