Departmental Facilities

The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry is fortunate to have excellent facilities which encourage and support research and teaching activities. Space for departmental laboratories, services and offices is housed in three connected buildings. About one third of the space was recently added/renovated to provide quality space for expanded activities. The backbone of our support facilities is provided by Research Support Services for the operation, maintenance and design of research instrumentation. Research Support Services is staffed by three Ph.D. chemists who oversee the operation of the NMR, Mass Spectrometers, X-ray diffractometers and computer network. Additionally, three highly skilled electronics experts provide support, design and maintenance of the instrumentation. The department also maintains an excellent staffed glassblowing shop.

A list of the major departmental instrumentation includes:

• Two superconducting FT-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometers, a VMX-400 (400 MHz proton) and a VXR-300(300 MHz proton). These student-operated instruments multinuclear, solid or liquid, variable temperature, field gradient 1D or 2D experiments.
  
  
• Three mass spectrometers, a VG ZAB-E, a Finnigan Polaris/GCQ Plus, and a Micromass Q-Tof. With these instruments, the staff can routinely run EI, CI, FAB (Xe), and ESI (including nanoflow) with a rapid sample turnaround. For most of these techniques low or high mass analysis isavailable; as well as GC/MS, LC/MS, and MS/MS.
  
  
• The small molecule X-ray laboratory has a Bruker-AXS Apex CCD instrument with low temperature capability and automated data processing. The protein X-ray laboratory houses a Rigaku RU-H3R rotating anode X-ray generator, Molecular Structure Corporation RAXIS IV++ dual imageplate detectors, and an Oxford Series 700 cryosystem.
  
  
• Other departmental instrumentation includes a Nicolet SX200 FT-IR, an Aviv Model 62DS CD and a Rudolph Auto Pol III polarimeter.
  
  
• Other shared instrumentation includes a CV with low temperature and inert atmosphere capability and an ESR with X and Q-Bands.

Depending on their research project, chemistry and biochemistry students may also have access to equipment elsewhere in the university including, for example, three supercomputers, powder diffraction units, electron microscopy, molecular beam epitaxy-MOCVD, MALDI or electrospray mass spectrometers. While all of this shared instrumentation provides a solid infrastructure for research, it is the individual group instrumentation that the students work with daily and on which they become experts. The research groups maintain individual state-of-the-art instrumentation and equipment required for efficient research progress. For complete information see the individual research descriptions or the publications cited there. The instructional laboratories are also well-equipped, having an HP-GC with autoinjector, an HP GC-MS, and equipment necessary for biochemistry. Clearly the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Oklahoma is well-equipped to carry out forefront research and provide training as we go into the next century.

The department maintains a staffed research stockroom as well as a teaching stockroom. Routine supplies and assistance in ordering specialty items are available through the stockroom. The research stockroom also coordinates proper chemical waste disposal through the university's environmental services. The Chemistry/Math Library is conveniently housed in the Physical Sciences Center. It contains more than 70,000 periodicals and reference books and is managed by the chemistry/math librarian, Lina L. Ortega. We maintain subscriptions to more than 350 journals and 250 continuing series. Graduate students can be granted 24 hour a day access to the stacks.

OU Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Support Facilities:

• Small Molecule X-ray Crystallography Laboratory
• Protein X-ray Laboratory