CHEM6250 – Advanced Analytical Chemistry

Overview

During the spring semester Frank teaches Advanced Analytical Chemistry I (CHEM6250). Main objective of this class is to provide a comprehensive introduction to advanced NMR spectroscopy and mass spectroscopy as tools to characterize molecular structure. The course covers applications of NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry to problems in chemical biology and biochemistry with additional examples from synthetic organic chemistry, inorganic (organometallic), and polymer chemistry. In addition, applications of NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry in metabolomics and systems biology are discussed. The course uses many examples from the current literature, including organic synthesis, natural products, chemical biology, and polymer chemistry examples.

Because effective processing especially of two-dimensional NMR data is essential for proper analysis, this course includes an introduction to MNOVA, an NMR software package likely to become the standard tool for analyzing one- and two-dimensional spectra of organic compounds. All participants of the course will obtain licenses for MNOVA, and processing and analysis of one- and two dimensional spectra using this software will constitute an important part of in-class demonstrations and homework. In addition, the course will cover basic Varian VNMR/VNMRJ commands for setting up 1D and 2D spectra.

Software

The software package MNOVA (formerly MestReC, compatible with both Macintosh and Windows computers) is now available for users of the Cornell NMR facility. If you are a registered user of the NMR facility and would like to use MNOVA, please contact Ivan Keresztes at ik54@cornell.edu. More information on MNOVA can be found at www.mestrec.com.

Course Bibliography

The NMR part of the course will be based largely on the excellent texts High-Resolution NMR Techniques in Organic Chemistryby Timothy D. W. Claridge and Basic One- and Two-Dimensional NMR Spectroscopy by Horst Friebolin. My personal favorite is the book by Tim Claridge, because it provides much more in terms of examples and detail for using two-dimensional techniques in Organic Chemistry. The text by Friebolin includes a very thorough description of the basic concepts of NMR spectroscopy, but lacks detail when discussing two-dimensional spectra. For the mass spectrometry-related part of the course we will primarily rely on handouts; those of you with a deeper interest in mass spectrometry should consider the textbook Interpretation of Mass Spectra by F. W. McLafferty & F. Tureček.

Other texts worth looking at include:
Organic Structure Analysis by Phillip Crews, Jamie Rodriguez, Marcel Jaspers
(Many examples for solving structures)

Structure Determination of Organic Compounds: Tables of Spectral Data by E. Pretsch, P. Buhlmann and C. Affolter
(Highly useful listings of NMR/MS/IR/UV spectral data).