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Facilities | Resources
Instrumentation Facilities
The Department is well equipped with the instrumentation, both shared and in individual faculty research laboratories, to perform modern chemical research. The department purchased an entirely new suite of NMR spectrometers in the fall of 2004. The Departmental Instrumentation Facility houses the following pieces of major instrumentation:
- Bruker Avance 400 MHz FT-NMR spectrometers (2), one located in the Instrumentation Facility in Remsen Hall and the other on the first floor of the new chemistry building
- Bruker Avance 300 MHz FT-NMR spectrometer
- Varian Mercury 200 MHz FT-NMR spectrometer (located in the undergraduate instructional laboratory)
- VG Instruments VG70S magnetic sector mass spectrometer, with FAB, DCI, EI, and CI ionization
- Finnigan LCQ ion trap mass spectrometer with electrospray ionization (APCI available as an option)
- Kratos SEQ Kompact MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer
- Shimadzu GC17A/QP5050A GC-MS with EI ionization
- Bruker EMX EPR spectrometer equipped with a liquid helium cryostat and variable temperature controller
- Bruker Vector 33 FT-IR spectrophotometer
- Jasco P-1010 polarimeter
- Jasco circular dichroism spectrophotometer
- Xcalibur3 X-ray diffractometer with CCD area detector (located on the second floor of the new chemistry building)
- Protein Technologies Symphony Quartet Peptide Synthesizer
Three departmental staff members are responsible for the maintenance and operation of these instruments. Upon checkout, students are allowed to operate the NMR and EPR spectrometers.
NMR spectrometers suitable for studies of biological macromolecules are located in the Biomolecular NMR Center, located in an underground facility in front of the new chemistry building. This center is a joint initiative of the Departments of Biology, Biophysics, Chemistry, and Materials Science in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, with additional collaboration from the Departments of Biochemistry and Pharmacology in the School of Medicine. The instruments include 500, 600, and 800 MHz FT-NMR spectrometers. Scheduling for these spectrometers is handled by the center.
A variety of different mass spectral techaniques are available in the recently overhauled Mass Spectrometry Facility. High-resolution mass spectra of submitted samples are obtained on a service basis by a staff member using a magnetic sector instrument equipped with EI, CI and FAB ionization methods. MALDI-TOF, GC/MS, and electrospray instruments are also available and operated by students and researchers following training by the facility staff.
The newly established X-ray Diffractometer Facility is operated by a staff member. The instrument is suitable for detailed molecular-l
evel structural characterization of new organic or inorganic compounds.
The department was recently awarded an NSF instrumentation grant to establish an in-house peptide synthesis facility. This facility is equipped with a four-channel peptide synthesizer from Protein Technologies, an Agilent HPLC equipped with both a diode array and a fluorescence detector, and a lyophilizer. Students receive training in peptide synthesis and purification and then may use these instruments as needed.
The Department shares the use of the Physical Sciences Machine Shop, located in Bloomberg Hall, with the Physics and Astronomy Department. Electronics construction and repair is handled by a staff member in the Departmental Instrumentation Facility.
The Department has a computer lab housing a compliment of Macintosh and Windows PC computers. These are available for the use of undergraduate and graduate students.
In addition to the departmental instrumentation, individual research groups have acquired or constructed numerous pieces of specialized research instrumentation. A 
wide variety of laser systems, including Ar ion, Nd:YAG, excimer, dye lasers, and optical parametric oscillators are operational in individual faculty laboratories. Custom-built apparatus include negative ion photoelectron spectrometers, UV and IR cavity ring-down spectrometers, electron energy-loss spectrometers, time-of-flight and magnetic mass spectrometers, molecular beam apparatus, UHV surface analysis apparatus, atomic-force microscopes, nanophase material generators, and a nanosecond time-resolved IR spectrometer.