NMR Learning Hub

  • Nanalysis Industrial App Note Cover Img

    Benchtop NMR Industrial Application Notes

    Nanalysis is collaborating with scientists, industry leaders and other NMR domain experts in a variety of market segments to prepare a series of NMR spectroscopy lectures, demonstrations, white papers, etc.

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    Sample NMR Experiments for Chemistry Labs

    The benchtop NMR allows you to incorporate hands-on NMR Spectroscopy directly into your undergraduate teaching lab. Read more to get inspirations.

    Find ready made undergrad labs

  • NMR Blog

    Everything about NMR. Light and short educational piece you can’t miss out. You will find topics in educational, academic to industry.

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    NMR Spectra Library

    Here you can find a continually updated database of 1D and 2D homo- and hetero-nuclear spectra acquired at either 60 MHz or 100 MHz.

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    Quantitative NMR (qNMR)

    While often overlooked, the inherently quantitative nature of NMR Spectroscopy is gaining increasing recognition in the field as a greener alternative to quantify a number of key parameters. Explore the latest in quantitative benchtop NMR assay development.

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  • Customer Experience

    Discover what our customers are saying about their experiences with Nanalysis’ benchtop NMR product line. Learn about ease-of-use, data performance, use cases and customer experience here.

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    NMR Infographics

    Infographics are an incredibly effective tool for conveying complex information in an easy-to-understand format. They can be used to summarize important points, explain complex concepts, and provide visual aids to help learners better understand the material.

    Print free NMR posters for your lab

  • Will Compact Benchtop NMR Work For Me?

    There are two main trade-offs to be made as one moves to low-field NMR. The first is sensitivity. A spectrometer’s sensitivity is directly correlated to its field strength, and the resultant Boltzmann distribution of nuclear spins.

    Find out more
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    Benchtop NMR Product Videos

    Watch the latest technology development, Nanalysis product demos, academic or industrial NMR webinars, customer testimonials and more.

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Benchtop Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Assays According to United States Pharmacopoeia (USP)
– National Formulary Monographs

The monographs published in the United States Pharmacopoeia – National Formulary (USP-NF) contain some of the most trusted and widely used assays across the pharmaceutical industry. Detailing the analysis of a wide range of products, such as active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), excipients, and other small molecules, these methods make use of a variety of instrumentation, such as high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), infrared (IR) spectroscopy, UV-vis spectroscopy, and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.

While relatively few assays in the USP-NF make use of NMR, the inherently quantitative nature of this technique makes it a very powerful tool for quantitative analyses (qNMR). However, most of the assays published in these monographs require the use of high-field NMR spectrometers (≥300 MHz). Due to the large upfront and recurring costs of these instruments, in addition to their space requirements, these powerful systems are often too expensive to purchase and maintain for most laboratories. The enhanced sensitivity and peak dispersion inherent to larger magnetic fields, while often beneficial and sometimes necessary for more complex research applications involving structural elucidation, are not always required when NMR is used as a technique for routine testing.

The emerging popularity of benchtop NMR instruments has addressed many of the accessibility concerns associated with traditional high-field instruments. These systems make use of permanent magnet technology, enabling them to operate without the use of cryogens. Additionally, they do not require expert staff for maintenance and non-experts can use them to collect high quality data. These factors, combined with their small size and portability, uniquely positions these instruments for quality control (QC) assays, like those highlighted in the USP-NF monographs. Indeed, the accessibility, affordability, and automatability of benchtop NMR instruments means that these are uniquely suited for use by non-experts in these QC settings.

What is NMR Spectroscopy?

NMR Spectroscopy is the most commonly used analytical technique in the chemists’ toolbox. An information-rich tool, NMR is used for elucidating molecular structure by providing evidence of the type, number, and connectivity of the constituents composing a molecule.

What is benchtop NMR spectrometer?

For traditional superconducting spectrometers, access to this technique is typically limited to a central NMR facility.  With the addition of the Nanalysis benchtop NMR spectrometer, you can now have an additional layer of NMR workflow.  While the benchtop NMR is not meant to replace a high-field NMR spectrometer fully, there a number of applications where benchtop NMR can be used to improve your daily productivity, streamline your process, and reduce your costs.

Why would you use a benchtop NMR spectrometer?

Advantages of Benchtop NMR Spectrometers

1) You need quantitative data. Fast.

NMR Spectroscopy is an inherently quantitative, linear technique.  This means that the relative integrations of resonances can be used determine relative or absolute molar ratios of the components in solution.  A benchtop NMR spectrometer can be a quick, easy, and precise alternative to chromatographic methods that typically consume large quantities of solvent and require long run times.

2) Your high-field NMR spectrometer is always busy.

You need to see if a reaction has finished, or if a reagent or product is clean, but there is no available time on your high-field NMR spectrometer.  The Nanalysis benchtop NMR spectrometer can easily be used for these applications, and you can save queuing on the high-field for full structural elucidation of new molecules.

3) You're spending a fortune on outsourcing analytical costs.

The Nanalysis benchtop NMR spectrometer is an affordable capital cost with no additional maintenance charges.  It uses 5 mm NMR tubes so you can easily make up samples, pre-screen them on the benchtop and outsource only samples that require additional characterization and/or better resolution.

4) You need relaxation AND speciation data.

Relaxometers are useful to determine bulk properties of solutions (e.g., solid fat content (SFC), moisture content, viscosity, etc.), but in addition to these measurements you would like to know about the chemical composition as well (e.g., saturated vs. unsaturated fatty acid compositions). Nanalysis benchtop NMR resolves both needs.

5) NMR has been recommended to you for routine analysis, but you're not an expert.

Nanalysis benchtop NMR can be easily configured into an ‘analyzer’ type mode from our application programmatic interface (NMReady-CONNECT) where users can acquire data without needing to understand or interpret the data they’re looking at.  This can be done quantitatively or qualitatively.  Please inquire if you’d like more information.

6) You want to introduce a hands-on component to your students.

Anyone who’s taught NMR Spectroscopy to undergraduates knows that it is initially one of the hardest techniques to understand.  Students are seldom able to access traditional NMR spectrometers, which are typically allocated to more advanced researchers. This makes spectroscopy even more mystifying to students. One advantage of a benchtop NMR spectrometer is that it lets students make and run their samples, as early as their freshman year.  This can immeasurably aid students in their handle on the theory and application of this vital analytical tool.

Nanalysis 100 MHz benchtop NMR Verticle img

Will compact NMR work for you?

Since the launch of compact, benchtop NMR spectrometers in 2013, these instruments have been gaining increasing attention in:

a) Academic Teaching
b) Research
c) QA/QC development in a variety of fields
d) Reaction Monitoring and PAT Development

Most chemists are familiar with high-field superconducting magnets (usually 400MHz+). The benchtop NMR is high-resolution, meaning that the field is homogenous enough to observe discrete peaks and multiplicities, but it is low-field permanent magnet (≤100 MHz). These instruments were not meant to replace high-field NMR, certainly not, but rather to provide an affordable, accessible and automatable alternative to the more traditional instrumentation. This allows NMR Spectroscopy to be introduced into applications that were previously underserved or even ignored.

There are two main trade-offs to be made as one moves to low-field NMR. The first is sensitivity. A spectrometer’s sensitivity is directly correlated to its field strength, and the resultant Boltzmann distribution of nuclear spins. This means that lower-field spectrometers are inherently less sensitive and will have a lower signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) than high-field counterparts.

To offset this fundamental constraint there are two options:

(i) increase the concentration of the sample
(ii) increase the number of scans acquired for each sample

The second limitation is resolution, or more accurately dispersion (Hz/ppm). As the spectral width (in Hz) decreases with field, at lower fields peaks tend to be closer together or exhibit more second order effects. An example of peak separation is the resolution of the CH group of ibuprofen in 100 MHz, whereas there is slight overlap in 60 MHz.  There are a number of software tools to assist analysis of such spectra, please inquire for more details. 

If you are unsure as to whether or not your application is amenable to the Nanalysis Benchtop NMR Spectrometers, please don’t hesitate to contact us for more information.

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A look into science is part of our YouTube playlist that is dedicated to showcasing how our benchtop NMR spectrometer can be used as a valuable learning tool for students conducting lab research. Our videos highlight the various ways in which our NMR spectrometer can be integrated into academic curriculums and research projects, providing students with hands-on experience in the field of analytical chemistry.