9312082 Espenson This award from the Chemistry Research Instrumentation Program will assist the Department of Chemistry at Iowa State University in the purchase of a high resolution 400 MHz, multinuclear, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer. This upgrade will enhance greatly research in a number of areas including the following: 1) Organometallic chemistry of the transition metals, 2) The development of new synthetic routes to alkaloids using bridgehead radicals and carbanions, 3) The exploration of novel synthetic routes to pleurotin and podophyllotoxin using photochemical hydrogen atom abstraction/cycloaddition, 4) The coordination and organometallic chemistry of metalloporphyrins, 5) Structural and conformational characterization of novel atranes, 6) Non-covalent binding of substrates by synthetic receptors, 7) A study of the fundamental thermal reactions of organic compounds, 8) An NMR study of free radical and electron transfer processes. %%% A nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer is used to obtain information about molecular structure (what types of carbon and/or hydrogen atoms and/or hetero-atoms are present, what are the relative number of each type of atoms and how are they connected to one another in the molecule) and molecular dynamics (how rapidly are the various parts of the molecule moving). This instrument is essential for any meaningful, modern synthetic chemistry research program. ***
