Who doesn’t want to start the day with a warm cup of coffee? Coffee has a stimulating effect on humans because of its caffeine content and for that reason it has become one of the most popular drinks in the world. Some clinical studies actually suggest that small amounts of caffeine everyday might be beneficial for adults. In this blog I am going to highlight an experiment done in collaboration with the Swager group at MIT using an organometallic complex to quantify the caffeine content in regular coffee without sample preparation!

BODIPY dyes, which are boron difluoride compounds supported by dipyrrinato ligands, have gained recognition as being one of the more versatile fluorophores due to their superior photophysical properties.[1,2] BODIPY derivatives are used as stable functional dyes in several fields such as light harvesters, laser dyes, fluorescent switches, and biomolecular labels.[3-6] They gained popularity as biological probes due to the easy modification of the ligand framework, extension of the chromophore, and substitution of the fluorine atoms.6 Figure 1 shows some commercially available BODIPY dyes used as biological probes.

In the average case one can simply dissolve an analyte in an appropriate deuterated solvent and acquire a simple 1D spectrum to obtain all the required structural information. However, sometimes doing so may not provide you with all of the information you need!

NMR spectroscopy is by far the most useful characterization technique in organic chemistry, especially if you have to elucidate the structure or configuration of your products. Arguably, 2D experiments such as COSY, HSQC, and HMBC have simplified this task tremendously. In this post I wanted to highlight the COSY of α-humulene. Read more.

One of the questions that we always get at tradeshows and conferences is how our instrument compares to high-field data. There are significant inherent differences between low-field and high-field instruments, but the most important from a chemistry point of view are sensitivity (S/N) and resonance dispersion (signal separation). Read More.

When monitoring reaction progress for determination of reaction kinetic parameters, NMR spectroscopy has increasingly become the method of choice. The ease in which one can calculate the concentration changes of a substrate being consumed or a product being formed over time, directly from peak integration are the reason behind this.

What is process analytical technology (PAT) and why is it so important?PAT is an extremely powerful and useful tool for analyzing, optimizing and controlling chemical processes. Chemical, food and pharmaceutical industries could especially benefit from this technique. In earlier days, chemical processes were primarily monitored by physical techniques, such as temperature, pH, pressure etc..

For my first blog I have decided to talk a little bit about boron because it’s a fascinating element that imparts remarkable properties to its compounds. And believe me, there are hundred of different compounds with very different properties containing boron centers. We find boron in compounds like boronic acids (A), boronic esters (B), and MIDA boronates (C), all of which are very popular in Suzuki coupling reactions to make new C–C bonds.  Another popular family of compounds containing boron are the BODIPY dyes (D). These derivatives, composed of a dipyrromethene ligand supporting a BF2 unit, are used as stable functional dyes in several fields, but their application as biomolecular labels is the most investigated by far.

Distortionless Enhancement by Polarization Transfer (DEPT) is a double resonance pulse program that transfers polarization from an excited nucleus to another – most commonly 1H → 13C. This results in a sensitivity enhancement relative to the standard decoupled 1D carbon spectra (13C), which benefits only from the small Nuclear Overhauser Effect (NOE) enhancements.

There is no element on earth that gets as much air-time as carbon. I mean, let’s be honest, when’s the last time you caught up on the news when you didn’t see carbon in the limelight –