Laboratories

The Organic Spectroscopy Laboratory (Navile campus, building UE4, 4th floor, laboratory 11) carries out fundamental research on the structure, conformation and stereochemistry of organic molecules.

Research topics

  •  Conformational analysis: conformational processes are observed by dynamic NMR (D-NMR) and modelled by DFT calculations. 

            https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejoc.200901340

  • Atropisomers and axial chirality: when rotational barriers are high, atropisomers can be isolated by chiral HPLC.  We study axially chiral compounds based on C–C, C–N and C–B bonds, a route to enantiopure molecules and drugs without stereogenic carbons. 

           https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejoc.201901918

  • Relative configuration: determined by 1D and 2D NMR (1H, 13C, NOESY and heteronuclear experiments).
  • Absolute configuration: assigned by ECD and VCD combined with DFT and TD-DFT calculations, also when X-ray anomalous dispersion is not applicable. The same calculations are used to predict the fluorescence of organic molecules.

           https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wcms.96

 

Instruments

 

NMR – Varian Unity-INOVA 600 MHz

Triple-resonance PFG indirect probe, SW-PFG probe and a dedicated variable-temperature probe (−180 to +180 °C), used for low- and high-temperature dynamic NMR.

NMR – Varian Mercury-Plus 400 MHz

Broadband PFG probe, dual-band indirect probe and variable-temperature probe, used for advanced routine spectra.

Electronic circular dichroism (ECD) – Jasco J-810

ECD measures the different absorption of left and right circularly polarised UV-visible light by the two enantiomers. Combined with TD-DFT or EOM-CCSD calculations, it determines the absolute configuration of new compounds that absorb in the UV region, without the need for single crystals.

Vibrational circular dichroism (VCD)– BioTools

VCD is the infrared counterpart of ECD, so it can also be applied to molecules without UV absorption. Combined with DFT calculations, it provides a direct and reliable assignment of absolute configuration. Our BioTools spectrometer has a single 37 kHz ZnSe photoelastic modulator (PEM) and a dual IR optical bench with MCT detector. It can record spectra at variable temperature and on solid films, thanks to a rotating IR cell.

HPLC – Waters 600

Waters 600 system with 2487 UV detector and high-flow pumps, for analytical, semi-preparative and preparative separations, including enantiomers and atropisomers on chiral stationary phases (CSP).

Computing

An in-house cluster of multi-processor servers [up to 88 cores and 256 GB RAM] for DFT and TD-DFT calculations with Gaussian16.

Thesis and research opportunities

We offer bachelor's and master's theses and PhD projects on atropisomer synthesis, atropisomeric drugs and computational chemistry.

 

Analytical services


The laboratory offers analyses and consultancy to companies and research institutions. See Services for the list of analyses and how to request them.

Contacts


Prof. Andrea Mazzanti – Full Professor of Organic Chemistry
andrea.mazzanti@unibo.it – +39 051 20 9 3632

Prof. Michele Mancinelli – Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry
michele.mancinelli@unibo.it – +39 051 20 9 3645 

Department of Industrial Chemistry "Toso Montanari", Via Piero Gobetti 85, 40129 Bologna, Italy