The Chemistry Department has an international profile, and is supported by state-of-the-art infrastructure. We can provide a complete range of equipment, facilities and technical expertise to support your studies. The Research Laboratories are modern and spacious and include specialist facilities for biochemical, computational, instrumental, and synthetic activities.

The Department is also served with a wide range of research grade equipment and spectrometers. In-house chemistry computing facilities include a dedicated computer suite and associated reading room. All PCs are linked to the University PC server and mainframe computer. Additionally we have our own glassblowing, electrical and mechanical workshops, for customised and bespoke design of specialist equipment.

There is a good collection of all the mainstream chemistry journals and reference books in the library in the Chemistry Department. The main University library has further chemistry journals and the main collection of science abstracts, books and periodicals. There is an on-line catalogue of the full library collection and an on-line Chemical Abstracts database search facility.

The Department has many well equipped research laboratories all with facilities and equipment to cater for diverse range of research interests. For writing up research the laboratory groups usually have a separate area, close to the laboratory, equipped with computers and work stations.

The Department has invested heavily in instrumentation vital to research including NMR, Mass Spectrometers and an X-ray Diffractometer.

NMR Spectrometers

The NMR section has 3 Bruker Biospin Ltd. spectrometers in service, operating at field strengths 300, 400 and 500 MHz.All the spectrometers are networked to allow off-line processing of 1D spectra on a number of PCs' within the department.

The DPX300 spectrometer is primarily an undergraduate research resource. Equipped with an automatic sample changer (60 position – 30 spinners), there are a large number of experiments available within the automation setup.
The DRX400 spectrometer is primarily a postgraduate research resource. The spectrometer is equipped with an automatic sample changer (60 position - 30 spinners) for open access use. The spectrometer can also be used for low and high temperature experiments. 

The AV500 spectrometer is the department's newest NMR spectrometer and is a dedicated research only spectrometer.

Mass Spectrometers

The Chemistry Department Mass Spectrometry service has 3 spectrometers in service, operating mainly for the research groups within the department and in addition looks after, with access to, a fourth spectrometer the primary user of which is The Centre for Chemical Biology.

• The Kratos Concept 1H is an operator controlled service. Ionisation techniques available are EI,CI,FAB with the option of Nominal Mass Spectra, High Resolution Spectra and Accurate Mass determinations by Peak Matching.
• The Micromass Quattro is an Open-Access instrument, with set methods based on expected mass. The ionisation source used is Electrospray and spectra for both Positive ions and Negative ions are produced automatically.
• The Perkin-Elmer TurboMass GCMS an Open-Access instrument, with set methods based on the type of sample and expected behaviour through a GC column.

• Water Acquity XEVO Q ToF is an UPLC-MS system using an Electrospray ionisation Time of flight Mass Spectrometer to determine exact masses within 3ppm or better. UPLC allows HPLC separations to be conducted in much shorter time spans and usually with smaller sample volumes.
  Simple single compound determinations or more complex mixtures can be handled giving Exact mass, MSMS and Formula prediction, the only requirement being that the species is ionisable by Electrospray.

X-ray Diffractometer

The Department has a Bruker APEX 2000 diffractometer, which has a 4k CCD detector allowing rapid data acquisition for most samples. Crystal structure analysis by the interpretation of X-ray diffraction data is an extremely powerful technique. The method is used to elucidate not only the molecular structure of a compound but also the extended solid-state structure.