Micro/Nano-NMR

Micro- and Nano-NMR is the development of very small and sensitive coils and chips that allow for various NMR experiments on tiny volumes of sample. The miniaturization of these NMR-coils and there incorporation in chips, allows the development of relatively cheap and very versatile measuring capabilities with some unexpected characteristics.

One of the applications of these developments is studying catalytic conversion in a microreactor. For the ananlysis of the outcome of a microreactor you can choose to analyse the samples collected from the outlet (end detection). A more relevant measurement of the conversion would be to study the conditions within the channel directly (in situ) and on-flow. During this project, we develop a micro-NMR probe to directly measure the microliter volumes inside a microreactor coated with catalytic nanoparticles. As model reaction hydrogenation will be studied under mild conditions. The combination of micro-NMR and a catalyst-coated microreactor has not been tried before and may well contribute to the rational development of new catalysts.