Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is an essential method of performing structural characterization in the areas of material science, biology, and chemistry. It’s a standard method for studying the electronic and structural properties of paramagnetic systems. It’s now easy to find a table-top NMR for sale.
Most laboratories that check reactions and control the quality of materials can use NMR spectroscopy. The NMR spectrometers’ range of operation lies between 60 MHz and 100 MHz when they operate on electro-magnets.
This post presents to you a few of the observances that you need to make before using an NMR and when preparing a perfect NMR sample. Here is what you should know and understand before using or buying an NMR for sale.
Choose the Right Solvent for Your NMR
You should dissolve your NMR samples in deuterated solvents. You can take a small sample of your test material and try to dissolve it in a protonated solvent. You can then evaporate the solution before conducting the next solvent test.
The protonated solvent shouldn’t end up in the NMR tube. There are many deuterated solvents, but you can find the most appropriate by checking the catalogs of chemical suppliers.
Basic Safety
Don’t allow ferromagnetic materials close to your table-top NMR equipment because the NMR magnets are always live. Sensitive electronic devices should also be far away from your NMR equipment. Such devices may get destroyed by the strong magnetic fields. All NMR for sale comes with a user manual, and you should read it well to understand the basic safety needs when using the device.
Use Clean NMR Tubes
Ensure the NMR tubes are clean on their inner and outer surfaces. Dirty tubes shouldn’t be placed into your NMR instrument because they’ll cause bad spectra. The tubes should have a height of 16 cm and above, and they should not have any chipping or cracks.
Adding the Solvent
Your sample in the NMR tube needs to be at least 5 cm for you to get the right NMR spectrum. It’s often recommendable to have a sample of reasonable height and a low concentration than having a sample of high concentration and a short height. You should not fill the NMR tube with your solvents to prevent convection problems.
Quantity of Test Material
The amount of test material that you will use will change from sample to sample. If your test material has small molecules, then you should use 20 to 50 mg of the test material if you intend to get a 13C spectrum within a reasonable time. Experiments running for a long time can get conducted by the use of small quantities of materials if the amount of the test materials is low.
If your material doesn’t dissolve well, you should filter the non-soluble particles. Filtration prevents non-soluble content from causing bad spectra.
Low/High-Temperature Samples
You should know the freezing and boiling point of your solvents when preparing samples for low/high-temperature NMR. You should test high-temperature samples for an hour at a temperature that is 20 degrees celsius above the predetermined temperature at which the NMR test will run.
Filter Out All Non-Soluble Materials
Non-soluble materials can result in bad spectra. If the material doesn’t dissolve well, you’ll not get results that show an accurate representation of what is in your vial. The instrument may give wrong results because it will ‘see’ impurities instead of what is in your solvent. The non-soluble solids can cause transverse relaxation time reduction of the observable nuclei, which will result in broad peaks.
Summary:
Most NMR for sale are costly. As such, you should learn to take good care of this equipment. Before going to look for an NMR for sale, ensure that you or your lab technician understand how to use the desktop NMR device. Implementing the recommendations made in this post can improve the results obtained from your portable NMR machine and prolong the machine’s lifespan.
