Integrated Molecular Structure Education and Research Center (IMSERC) at Northwestern

The IMSERC provides a single access point to comprehensive suite of analytical tools to characterize synthetic “small molecules”. The lab operates eight mass spectrometers including an Agilent 6210 time-of-flight LCMS, Waters GC-TOF, Bruker Autoflex III MALDI, two Bruker AmaZon ESI LCMS instrument and two Agilent 6890 GC-MS instruments with quadrupole analyzers. The lab provides small molecule and macromolecular structural characterization capabilities by NMR with a 600 MHz Bruker Avance III, 600 MHz Agilent DDR2 with triple-resonance coldprobe, 500 MHz Avance III with direct coldprobe, two 500 MHz Agilent systems (DDR2 + INOVA), two 400 MHz Agilent DDR2 spectrometers and a 400 MHz Varian instruments solid state spectrometers. Through the NU, UofC, UIC open access initiative, NU users also have rapid access to the 800 and 900 MHz Bruker Avance II spectrometers at UIC which are both equipped with triple-resonance cold probes. IMSERC maintains four single crystal X-ray diffractometers and two powder diffractometers (STOE STADIMP & STADIP) configured for transmission and reflection geometry, and in-situ/operanto experiments. Additionally, the Materials Science J. B. Cohen X-Ray Diffraction facility provides user access to more than ten diffractometers configured for specific experiments. NU researchers also have rapid access to synchotron based X-Ray diffraction at Argonne National Lab’s Advanced Photon Source through the NU managed DND-CAT and LS-CAT beamlines. The IMSERC provides access to FTIR, Raman, UV-Vis and fluorescence spectrometers for optical characterization.