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Magritek, a leading provider of compact NMR and MRI instruments, reports on how the Chemistry Department of the University of Helsinki is using benchtop Spinsolve NMR spectrometers in their organic chemistry laboratory practical sessions. 

Dr Leena Kaisalo heads up the Organic Chemistry student laboratory at the University of Helsinki. While the Laboratory’s research focuses on organic synthesis, Dr Kaisalo's role is to lead the teaching of bachelor and masters students in various analytical techniques including NMR. 

Before the Laboratory got a Magritek Spinsolve benchtop NMR spectrometer, the teaching assistants used to run NMR spectra for the students using 300 or 500 MHz spectrometers. These were always quite booked up for research purposes so it was necessary to limit the number of spectra per student to just one or two. Due to lack of time and training requirements, it was not possible for the students to operate these spectrometers themselves even if they would have liked to. 

Dr Kaisalo takes up the story. “Now all students run their own NMR spectra. They mainly run 1H spectra from their synthesis products. If they are interested, they can also run other spectra (¹³C and 2D-experiments). Our motivation for using Magritek Spinsolve is to teach our students NMR spectroscopy as a tool to analyze the structures of their synthesis products. The students can also use NMR in addition to IR to solve the unknown organic compounds when they do their qualitative organic analysis work.” 

“The students like to use the Spinsolve spectrometer as it is fast and quite easy to use. For teaching staff, one advantage of the Spinsolve is that it requires very little maintenance and does not require cryogens nor require much bench space. The level of success is reflected in that even some of our researchers have used the Magritek system to look at their reaction products.” 

Magritek's Spinsolve benchtop NMR spectrometer is supplied worldwide to academics in teaching and research; also to industry for research and reaction monitoring through to quality control use.

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