Chemistry and Biochemistry

Instrumentation

The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry strives to provide its faculty and students with the most current instrumentation for teaching and research.

Photograph of instruments in the chemistry lab.
A helium purification system in Professor Matt Elrod’s lab.
Photo credit: Photo courtesy of Zach Christy

Much of our equipment is purchased with funds from internal and external sources, such as private foundations, government science agencies, corporations, and alumni. Instruments purchased in part with funds from the National Science Foundation grant programs are marked below with an *.

Spectrophotometry

Varian Cary 5E UV-Vis-NIR instrument with reflectance and thin-film accessories*, an Agilent diode array spectrophotometer, several microplate absorbance readers, a JY Horiba spectrofluorometer, several FT-infrared instruments equipped with ATR cells, a Nicolet FT-IR/Raman spectrophotometer*.

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometry

Varian 400-MHz NMR spectrometer offering walkup collection of spectra from proton, carbon, and other nuclei, a 600-MHz instrument (Magnex magnet and Techmag console) with high-resolution solutions capability and solids magic angle spinning capability.

Separations / Mass Spectrometry

Agilent gas chromatograph with FID and ECD, a Shimadzu GC-MS (single quad), a Shimadzu liquid chromatograph – ESI/APCI –  triple quad mass spectrometer, several electrophoresis systems.

Thermal Analysis

Mettler-Toledo simultaneous TGA-DSC instrument, differential scanning calorimeter (Mettler-Toledo DSC 3+).

X-ray Diffraction

Rigaku powder X-ray diffractometer* with capabilities for variable-temperature, small-angle scattering, and thin film analysis. The instrument is shared with the Department of Physics.

Electrochemistry

Bioanalytical Systems voltammograph, a Cypress Systems electroanalysis system, a variety of ion selective electrodes and other probes.