9451673 Schauer An "interdisciplinary" inorganic synthesis laboratory is being developed in the Chemistry department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that will cover a broad range of topics including solid-state chemistry, polymer chemistry, materials chemistry, main-group chemistry, organometallic chemistry, and coordination chemistry. An effort has been made to design several experiments around recent research developments to give students the flavor of modern inorganic chemistry. This proposal requests funds to purchase a 200 MHz Fourier Transform Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectrometer that will be utilized extensively for characterization of reaction products in this laboratory. This laboratory is a required course for all chemistry majors (taken by 80-100 students per year), and will serve as a vehicle for the education of our majors on the topic of Multinuclear FT-NMR Spectroscopy. To handle the large numbers of students involved in our program, the NMR spectrometer will be equipped with an automatic sample loader, automation software, and a quad probe that will provide routine access to 1H, 31P, l9F, and 13C spectra. Although student involvement in routine data acquisition with this instrument will be minimal, the students will be intimately involved in working-up their own data in the 30-station Chemistry Department personal computer laboratory. The program that we are establishing will serve as a model for bringing modern NMR spectroscopy into other programs with similarly large numbers of chemistry majors. Furthermore, this same instrumentation will be used to enhance the educational experiences of students in other laboratories where the numbers are reasonably small, including the honors organic laboratory, the polymer synthesis laboratory, and the advanced organic synthesis laboratory.
