16 November, 2006 -- The Chemistry Instrument Lab of Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ) has got the first 400MHz Bruker Biospin Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectrometer in Qatar, it was announced yesterday.
"NMR is an essential tool for the characterisation of organic and organometallic compounds," said Science Programme co-ordinator and Chemistry faculty member Dr Hassan S Bazzi, who is supervising the set-up of teaching and research labs.
"It provides us with an enormous amount of information about the structure of the molecule we are analysing," he explained.
The equipment works by putting the nuclei of certain atoms, Hydrogen for example, in a static magnetic field and exposing them to another oscillating field.
"Different atoms respond differently, and we can obtain lots of information by looking at a regular NMR spectrum," Dr Hazzi stated.
In addition, the instrument is equipped with accessories that allows to run experiments at temperatures varying from -80 degree C to 10 degree C, and with the broadband probe spectra can be collected for Hydrogen, Carbon, Phosphorus, Nitrogen, and Fluorine nuclei.
The Chemistry labs occupy around 10,000sq ft in the Liberal Arts and Science Building, which is the temporary location of TAMUQ in Education City.
Following the completion of the Engineering Building in Education City, the Chemistry programme will have space for teaching labs, research labs, instrumentation rooms, chemical storage rooms, and NMR facility room, among others.
"Although there are no Chemistry degrees offered at TAMUQ, all faculty are aggressively setting up their research projects and looking forward to collaborations with the Chemistry Department on the main campus in College Station, Texas," Dr Bazzi observed.
Qatar Science and Technology Park that is under construction will host leading international companies and research institutes who have already expressed interest in collaborating with many of the programmes at TAMUQ.
"We have a variety of instruments, a big library of chemicals and laboratory supplies for our day-to-day operation in the teaching labs and later for the research labs," he pointed out.
The Chemistry programme at TAMUQ was established in September 2004 to provide the necessary chemistry courses for Electrical, Mechanical and Petroleum Engineering majors and to support the Chemical Engineering programme with both theoretical and experimental Chemistry courses, including General, Organic, Analytical, Physical, and Polymer Chemistry.
