Instrumentation & Computers

The Chemistry Department at UAF has a wide range of modern instruments and computers available to undergraduate and graduate students.  The instruments are used at all levels of instruction.

Professors in the department have been active in writing grant proposals to the National Science Foundation for purchase of new instrumentation.
1998: The department's Varian Mercury 300-MHz multinuclear NMR was obtained in 1998 by professors Clausen, Stolzberg, and Kennish (UAA) as part of an NSF Instrumentation and Laboratory Improvement Program. It is used in approximately five courses and in organic and inorganic chemistry research.
2000: Professor Keller, along with co-PIs John Kennish, Michael Stekoll (UAS), and Rudy Candler (UAA-Matsu) obtained NSF funding to set up computer labs in the chemistry departments all four UA campuses and install HyperChem molecular modeling software.
2004: Richard Stolzberg, Tom Green, and John Keller gained NSF funding from the Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) program for purchase of the HPLC and CE instruments shown below.
2007: John Keller and Todd Gouin were funded by NSF-CCLI for purchase of the Agilent GC-MS pictured below.

Fourier Transform Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (FT-NMR) Spectrometer

The Department has installed a 300 MHz Varian NMR for use in undergraduate labs and research. It is used mainly in Chem 324 (Organic Lab) and Chem 433 (Physical Chemistry Lab). It has multinuclear capability--hydrogen, carbon-13, fluorine, phosphorus, nitrogen, and vanadium --and is controlled by modern software. It is capable of one and two dimensional NMR experiments. It was obtained through a grant from the National Science Foundation Instrumentation and Lab Improvement (NSF-ILI) program.

Shown in front of the spectrometer itself is a 100-position robotic  sample changer that moves samples in and out of the spectrometer under computer control.

The department currently (2007) has a Hewlett Packard 5890GC interfaced to a HP5972 mass selective detector. It is used for separating and identifying the components of volatile complex mixtures. The capillary column allow for separation of complex mixtures into individual components and database search software allows for identification of these components. It is has been used extensively for natural products chemistry and environmental chemistry research projects. Students in organic lab (Chem 324) and instrumental analytical chemistry lab (Chem 413) use the instrument as part of their regularly scheduled work.

Pictured at the right is a new GC-MS instrument slated for installation in early 2008. This machine is an Agilent 5975C GC-MS equipped with CTC CombiPal sample processing robot. The robot can inject various kinds of samples, including microliter volumes of liquids, vapor from the headspace of a closed sample bottle, or chemicals adsorbed on a solid phase microextraction (SPME) fiber.

We also have a Hewlett Packard 6890GC, with flame ionization detector and autosampler, which is used extensively for natural products chemistry research projects and organic chemistry lab (Chem 324) and instrumental analytical chemistry lab (Chem 413).

High Performance Liquid Chromatograph (HPLC)

The Agilent gradient HPLC with UV/VIS diode array and mass-sensitive detectors is used for separating and identifying the components of nonvolatile complex mixtures. It complements the GC-MS, and is particularly useful in separating compounds of biological interest.

Capillary Electrophoresis

This instrument was also obtained with NSF funding as part of a Separation Science package including new experiments for undergraduate laboratory classes. The CE  separates liquid-phase molecules with an electric charge that migrate down a narrow capillary under the influence of a 10,000-volt electric field. Charged molecules such as amino acids, proteins, and nucleic acids are often separated by CE.

We have three Hewlett Packard 8452A and one Hewlett Packard 8453A diode array  UV/VIS spectrophotometers for quantitative analysis of UV absorbing and visibly colored solutes. They all operate under the Windows ChemStation software.

We also have fixed wavelength spectrometers (Spectronic 21) for routine absorbance measurements.




 

A research-quality Nicolet Magna560 Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectrometer is used for structural characterization of organic compounds and for quantitative analysis of certain gaseous and liquid phase solutes in organic, analytical, and physical chemistry labs. We have a 10-m gas sampling cell and sampling hardware for diffuse reflectance, attenuated total reflectance, and external reflectance geometries.

Other Instrumentation

The Department has a Sorvall RC5B refrigerated centrifuge and a Beckman . The Department also has a wide array of balances, computers, pH meters, simple spectrophotometers, and other common instruments. Furthermore, specialized labs such as biochemistry have access to research equipment in faculty research labs.

Computer Facilities

Our computational facilities are modern, useful, and available to students. We have a lab with fifteen 1.5- or 3.0-GHz Intel based PCs with a wide variety of software for use in upper-division courses. Molecular modeling is carried out with HyperChem v. 8. Printers are available for color and black and white printing. Two flat-bed scanners are installed in these labs. We have also installed eight Pentium based machines in the instructional labs.

Arctic Region Supercomputing Center