Hello,
So, I just saw this and thought it was pretty nifty:
https://www.thermofisher.com/order/catalog/product/912A0911 (edit: removed broken link - http://www.picospin.com/products/)
Its a small NMR machine (about 10lbs and less than 1 cubic foot of space) that sits on the bench for 20,000 USD. its 45 MHz and uses a capillary, not NMR tubes, but still, benchtop NMR, without cryogenic liquids, and its a FT machine.
What do you think, would this be useful for research or teaching with undergraduates? I think the price is a significant benefit, but I get the impression that you need highly concentrated samples to aquire data.
They've got some example spectra on their website, but I'd be curious to see if it could be used for inorganic/organometallic compounds (31P of phosphine complexes, Metal-alkyls, etc). They've got some example spectra on their website, but its all organic compounds. It might be worth contacting the company and seeing if they can get it tailored for inorganic/organometallic use, then I'd really be impressed.
I think I would spend a little more money and go with the anasazi upgrade system for old Varian magnets (60 or 90 MHz). FT capable. Broad band capability. Works very nicely for P31. It is not very useful for C13NMR, but I imagine that would be a major problem with the picospin system as well. Of course at 60 or 90 MHz complex HNMRs get very ugly at this magnet strength.
I will say that Anasazi probably has the best customer service after the sale of any instrument company in the US. (disclaimer: I do not own anasazi stock.)
kurt
I'm chief chemist at picoSpin and invite you visit our website to submit a sample spectrum request. Being an organic chemist I spend all my time acquiring spectra of compounds of interest to organic chemists, but I would really like to look at some inorganic 1H applications as well.
Our capillary cartridge, micro coil design reduces amount of sample needed for analysis, only about 20 microliters is required to fill the capillary path and there is less than 100 nanoliters of active volume in the spectrometer’s RF coil. Samples need to be liquid for injection and for solid samples, solution concentrations should 1 M or better. The FAQ on our website (http://www.picospin.com/usermanual/faq.html) tells you how to estimate the SNR of your sample by scaling against the SNR of a single scan of the water signal. We use 300 in the equation but routinely see better than 500 SNR.
If you're interested in proton NMR, monitoring reactions, or perhaps even making susceptibility measurements, I think you'll find the pcioSpin-45 price point attractive. Also keep in mind that the picoSpin and Anasazi instruments are very different animals. But like you'll find in many NMR facilities, instruments are there to complement each other in their capabilities.
Dean
Dean