Abstract
- Funds are requested by early career and tenured researchers at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) to replace the console and probes on a eighteen-year-old 500 MHz NMR system (magnet is sound) that is no longer supported by the vendor for service or repair. The instrument is located in the Center for Marine Science (CMS) NMR/MS core facility that is shared between a diverse group of undergraduate and graduate researchers from Chemistry & Biochemistry, Biology & Marine Biology, CHHS, and MARBIONC tenants. The requested Prodigy® nitrogen-cooled cryoprobe enhancement proposed in this MRI submission will more than double the 1H and 19F sensitivity of this NMR without the need for expensive infrastructure and intractable annual maintenance costs associated with helium-based cryoprobes. It will also significantly reduce or eliminate the current need for weekly travel to the UNC Chapel Hill campus 326 miles away (round trip), which currently requires judicious selection of samples to be analyzed with this resource and excludes hands-on opportunities for students. This complementary upgrade will also help to meet the divergent needs of the two UNCW core research locations (Dobo Hall on main campus & CMS) and will offset the rapidly increasing demand for NMR access at UNC Wilmington.