Acquisition of an 800 MHz hybrid solution-/solid-state NMR spectrometer - PROJECT SUMMARY This proposal seeks to acquire a Bruker ASCEND 800 MHz nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer with AVANCE NEO console, CryoPlatform, TCI-H&F 5 mm solution-state CryoProbe, magic angle spinning (MAS) control unit, and 1.6 mm Phoenix NMR HXY MAS solid-state probe for Indiana University (IU). The success of IU research faculty on both the Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses is being considerably slowed by an antiquated 800 MHz NMR spectrometer that is nearing the end of its useful lifetime. Our 14- year-old 800 MHz pumped instrument was manufactured by the now-defunct branch of Agilent (formerly Varian) and has recently come off a ten-year service contract. An increasing number of malfunctions that require costly repairs have rendered it effectively unusable for eighteen months since June 2019 (50% of the past 36 months), with the list of hardware failures increasing in frequency to include the helium pressure control on the magnet itself. No other IU campus has an 800 MHz or higher field NMR spectrometer, forcing users to send samples to out-of-state NMR facilities when they become available. This arrangement makes it difficult to prioritize the study of precious NMR samples or provide meaningful student training opportunities, thus jeopardizing progress on NIH-funded projects. The requested acquisition is not simply a replacement but will permit currently inaccessible methodologies, such as model-free analysis, CPMG relaxation dispersion, CEST, and 19F/15N/13C direct detection, which comprise a substantial proportion of project goals for the 15 NIH-funded researchers supporting this proposal. It will provide 30% higher sensitivity for most applications, which becomes critical when sample is limiting, and an 87% ($52,000) annual savings in operational costs, largely as a result of savings on cryogens. The proposed instrument can also perform solid-state experiments to support an entirely new research sphere at IU-Bloomington among the four major users and the 18 minor users of this instrumentation. The choice of a broadly tunable, 3 channel 1.6 mm MAS HXY probe reflects the programmatic diversity of our users. It is capable of operating in triple-resonance or dual-resonance mode at spin rates up to 40 kHz and, depending on the configuration, the H, X and Y channels can be tuned from 1H to 19F, 31P to 13C and 23Na to 15N, respectively. This technology has garnered substantial interest across the biological, chemical and physical disciplines on campus and is expected to expand the current userbase. The urgent need for this new spectrometer is underscored by a strong institutional commitment of $1.91M in matching funds so that the educational and research goals of the growing NMR community on the Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses of Indiana University can be met.
