This award from the Chemistry Research Instrumentation and Facilities Program will help the Department of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in the purchase of a modern 300 MHz multinuclear NMR Spectrometer. This equipment will be used in the following areas of research: alkene-CO copolymerization using palladium catalysts, kinetic and mechanistic studies of benzocyclobutenyl-functionalized oligomers and polymers, NMR investigations of chemical exchange processes in organic and biological systems, synthesis and alkene polymerization studies of new metallocene catalysts, and structural and mechanistic studies of coordination complexes of redox-active heterocyclic ligands. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is the most powerful tool available to chemists for the elucidation of the structure of molecules. It is used to identify unknown substances, characterize specific arrangements of atoms within molecules, and to study the dynamics of interactions between molecules in solution. Access to state-of-the-art NMR spectrometry is essential to chemists who are carrying out frontier research. The results from these NMR studies are useful in the areas such as polymers and catalysis, and in biology.
