MgC facilities:

The MgC labs have excellent facilities for the synthesis and manipulation of extremely air and moisture sensitive compounds.  Each bench and fume hood is equipped with a purpose-designed Schlenk line connected to a rotary vane pump operating down to 10-3 Torr.  In addition, we have a high vacuum system for sublimation experiments connected to a turbomolecular pump operating routinely at 10-6 Torr.  For those awkward reduced pressure distillations we have a portable variable pressure pump, which operates anywhere between atmospheric pressure and 1 Torr, along with an in-house designed variable pressure pumping system which operates between 1.0 and 10-3 Torr. We also have a brand new MBraun glove-box for the manipulation and storage of air-sensitive samples.

The group has its own write-up room with general purpose computing facilities and dedicated computers for molecular modelling.  Available modelling software includes Titan, Gaussian03 and Gamess, which we also run on the University's High Performance Computer cluster.

Departmental facilities:

The group makes extensive use of the Department's excellent facilities for multi-element and variable temperature NMR spectroscopy.  Routine 1H and 13C experiments are carried out on a Bruker Avance 300 MHz spectrometer equipped with a 64 place auto-sampler.  More demanding experiments and those involving other nuclei are carried out on a JEOL Lambda 500 MHz spectrometer.  The MgC group make extensive hands-on use of the JEOL machine to obtain spectra of 1H, 13C, 7Li, 11B, 29Si, 31P, 119Sn, 133Cs, and 171Yb, and several other nuclei; we make particular use of 31P NMR spectroscopy for monitoring reactions and for dynamic and kinetic studies.

The department houses state-of-the-art facilities for single crystal X-ray crystallography under the direction of Prof. W. Clegg.  Facilities include two area detector diffractometers (Siemens SMART 1K and Nonius KappaCCD machines, both using Mo radiation), both of which have Oxford Cryosystems Cryostreams for low temperature data collection.  In addition there is a STOE 4-circle diffractometer with a point detector and a Bede Microsource copper X-ray tube.

The department has also recently upgraded its analytical facilities and now has an open access suite of new GC, GC-MS and LC-MS machines along with the usual FTIR and UV-Visible spectrometers, etc. (some fitted with probes for in situ reaction monitoring).