High Resolution, Cryogen-Free NMR at a Fraction of the Cost

Oxford Instruments (UK), one of the world’s specialist NMR specialists, has launched Pulsar - an affordable benchtop, cryogen-free NMR spectrometer that offers convenience without the special requirements and cost associated with superconducting magnets.

Pulsar offers performance without expensive liquid helium, making it suitable for virtually any chemistry laboratory and ideal for teaching NMR to undergraduates. Professor David Haddleton in the Department of Chemistry, University of Warwick, UK has been trialling Pulsar in his undergraduate laboratory.

“Pulsar was introduced into a year three synthetic chemistry undergraduate laboratory at Warwick and used to follow real time organic, inorganic and polymer reactions taken direct from the reaction medium. Installation was simply plugging in the 13A plug and leaving to warm up overnight”, says Professor Haddleton. “The absence of the requirement for deuterated solvents and the ability to collect excellent quality FT NMR in a single pulse in less than 2 minutes with instant exportation into all NMR software was incredibly valuable for our students. The experiment was easier and quicker than a TLC (Thin Layer Chromatography) with massively more information. The instant availability of the data proved invaluable for the selection of experiments required on the standard high field NMR spectrometer, thus freeing up instrument time and greatly reducing the need for time on more expensive instrumentation. This is a must for undergraduate laboratories and research laboratories without access to high field instrumentation.”

Pulsar requires a standard mains electrical supply and is offered at a fraction of the selling price of current high field NMR instruments with virtually no on-going running costs. It incorporates a 1.4T (60MHz proton resonance) rare-earth permanent magnet with superior homogeneity, providing outstanding spectral resolution, generating routine spectra in seconds. Instrument control comes from a seamless workflow package, while the processing and manipulation of data is achieved using the industry-leading Mnova NMR software from Mestrelab.