About Gateway NMR

Mission Statement

The mission of the new NSF-funded National Gateway Ultrahigh Field NMR Center is to promote and advance cutting-edge science using ultrahigh magnetic fields with focus on the areas of biomolecules and metabolomics by solution and solid-state NMR and materials science.

The centerpiece is a new 1.2 GHz NMR spectrometer with existing shared CCIC high-field NMR systems serving as “staging instruments”. Users from Academia, National Research Labs and Industry are supported by expert research scientists at the Center.

History

The 1.2 GHz NMR spectrometer is funded by the NSF grant RI-1 1935913 (October 2019 – September 2024), which was awarded to Drs. Rafael Brüschweiler (PI), Christopher Jaroniec (co-PI), Blanton Tolbert (co-PI), Philip Grandinetti (co-PI), and Mark Foster (co-PI). Over 80 collaborators contributed letters of support to acquire the system. Minimal renovations were required for the lab space at the Ohio State University and were completed by the end of 2021. On September 13, 2023, the instrument was delivered and on October 20, 2023 it reached field just before the 8th Gateway NMR conference at Purdue. Over the next several months the instrument continued to drift upwards before settling enough for routine use by the summer of 2024.

Operation

The 1.2 GHz NMR spectrometer is maintained and operated by the Campus Chemical Instrument Center (CCIC) staff. The daily operation of the Center will be managed by the Center’s Research Scientists and Staff and overseen by the PI/co-PI team with the advise of an External Advisory Committee and a Users Committee. Now that the NMR system has been commissioned, users from academia, national labs, and industry are invited to apply for NMR time at 1.2 GHz, including justification for the utility and need of NMR at ultrahigh magnetic field.

The 1.2 GHz is equipped with an assortment of solid-state and solution-state NMR probes. As such, we aim to operate the instrument 50% of the time for solid-state and 50% of the time for solution-state experiments. This balance will be largely driven by instrument requests, with the goal to have a 3-month cycle for operation modes.

Currently the 1.2 GHz is operating in solid-state mode

The next solution-state run will start in June 2025.

Fees

Instrument rates are determined to be cost neutral to support facility operations while ensuring broad access to advanced NMR capabilities. The instrument run time fees are:

Internal Ohio State: $18/hr
External Academic: $25/hr
Industry: $200/hr

Technical support is provided by CCIC staff and charged based on the amount of staff time required:

Internal Ohio State: $50/hr
External Academic: $100/hr
Industry: $250/hr

There is a 1 hour minimum charge for technical assistance and instrument time.