A special edition of Magnetic Resonance in Chemistry “Quantum-Chemical Computations of Magnetic Resonance Parameters”, edited by Sharon and Professor Michael Buehl from St Andrews, has been published this month. Thanks to all the authors who contributed to this issue for their hard work. Read more about this issue here.

The Ashbrook and Wormald group 2010 Christmas Meal took place (despite the snowy conditions in Fife) at the Vine Leaf Restaurant in St Andrews. Click here for photos.

Congratulations to Diego on his PhD graduation on a snowy St Andrew’s Day. Diego is currently working with Professor Geoffrey Bodenhausen in Lausanne. Switzerland.

October 2010

Sharon attended the official opening symposium of the UK 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility in Warwick on October. The facility was opened by David Delpy of EPSRC. Sharon is on the National Management Committee for this facility. The day consisted of a series of scientific talks from members of the International Advisory Board and UK NMR spectroscopists, followed by a champagne reception and official opening.

Sharon visited the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in Sheffield this month and gave a seminar entitled “Structure, Disorder and Dynamics in Solids: Multinuclear NMR and First-Principles Calculations”.

The group welcomes new members Rachael Crowe and Emily McHale who will be carrying out their undergraduate projects in the Ashbrook group this year. Rachael is carrying out research on pyrochlore ceramics, while Emily is investigating gallium phosphate (GaPO) microporous materials. September 2010

Congratulations to John and Martin who both had papers accepted this week. John’s paper “High-Resolution 19F MAS NMR Spectroscopy: Structural Disorder and Unusual J Couplings in a Fluorinated Silicate” with collaborators Andrew Berry, Jonathan Yates and Steve Wimperis has been accepted by J. Am. Chem. Soc.  Martin’s work “119Sn MAS NMR and First-Principles Calculations for the Investigation of Disorder in Stannate Pyrochlores”, with collaborators Chris Pickard and Karl Whittle (along with former Ashbrook group members Simon Reader and Karen Johnston) has been accepted by Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. See the Publications page for more details.

In other news, the group has been visited this month by collaborators Dr Karl Whittle from ANSTO and Dr Andrew Berry from Imperial College.

August 2010

Congratulations to Karen on her successful thesis defence on 20th August. Her examiners were Professor Mark Smith (Warwick) and Professor Russell Morris, (St Andrews). Karen’s 400 page thesis is entitled “A Complementary Study of Perovskites: Combining Diffraction, Solid-State NMR and First-Principles Calculations”. Karen is now heading off to Canada for postdoctoral research in the group of Professor Robert Schurko in Windsor. Click here for some more pictures from the day.

In other news, John and Sharon visited the 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility in Warwick for 8 days to carry out some 25Mg NMR measurements, and also this month the group was visited by Professor David Bryce (Ottawa). As David was here on the day of  Karen’s viva he was able to join in with the celebrations

July 2010

Congratulations to Diego who successfully defended his PhD thesis “Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and Computational Methods for the Characterization of Materials in Solution and the Solid State”, on the 19th July. His external examiner was Dr Melinda Duer from the University of Cambridge, along with Professor Russell Morris. Click here for some pictures of his celebrations. Diego will now start postdoctoral research with Professor Geoffrey Bodenhausen in Lausanne.

The group welcomes a new PhD student this month, Martin Peel, who will be jointly supervised by Sharon and by Professor Phil Lightfoot. Martin will be working on the synthesis and characterisation of perovskites. Click here for more information on Martin.

Sharon attended the Joint Euromar 2010 and 17th ISMAR Conference in Florence, Italy from July 4-9th 2010. She gave a talk entitled “Investigating Disorder in Ceramics: Multinuclear Solid-State NMR and First-Principles Calculations”. This excellent conference provided opportunities to meet with a number of collaborators.

In other news, papers by Karen (J. Am. Chem. Soc.), Diego (Tetrahedron) and Valerie (J. Phys. Chem. C) have all been published this month. See the Publications page for more details.

June 2010

Martin, Valerie and Daniel attended the 2010 postgraduate meeting of the NMRDG on the 25th June at the University of Leeds. They presented posters on their work entitled

Solid-State NMR Investigation into Local Structure and Order in Aluminophosphates (Valerie)

Investigating Disorder in Pyrochlores by MAS NMR and First-Principles Calculations (Martin)

Structure, Disorder and Phase Transitions in AlPO-53 (Daniel)

Click here for pictures.

Congratulations to Valerie and also to John and Diego. Their work on the aluminophosphate framework STA-2 (in collaboration with Dr Paul Wright) has just been accepted for publication in J. Phys. Chem. C. See here for full details of our recent publications.

Congratulations to former project students Lucy, Andrew and Chris who all graduated this week with MChem degrees.

Working in the group in June are Jeanette Ferrara from Texas, USA, who is completing a two-week school project in the group and Simon Hogan (St Andrews undergraduate) who is undertaking a summer research project. They are both are investigating 77Se NMR of organoselenium compounds, with Jeanette focusing on experiment and Simon on computation.

During the first week of June the group was visited by Dr Frederic Blanc from the group of Professor Clare Grey (Cambridge/Stony Brook). Frederic gave an excellent talk entitled “NMR or Vacancies: Defect Structures and Mobility in Doped Perovskites”. The group also entertained Frederic with some putting on the St Andrews “Himalayas” course and a trip to Anstruther to sample the famous fish and chips. See here for photos.

May 2010

Karen’s paper “The Polar Phase of NaNbO3: A Combined Study by Powder Diffraction, Solid-State NMR and First-Principles Calculations”, with her joint supervisors Sharon and Professor Phil Lightfoot, has been accepted for publication in J. Am. Chem. Soc. This work can now be found online the asap section of the JACS website.

Also this week, Diego’s paper “Detecting Solid-State Reactivity in 10-hydroxy-10,9-Boroxophenanthrene using NMR Spectroscopy”, with collaborator Professor Douglas Philp, has been accepted for publication in Tetrahedron. Congratulations to them both!

Congratulations to Chris and Louisa who handed in their undergraduate project reports this week. Louisa’s was entitled “25Mg Solid-State NMR Study of Geologically Relevant Materials” while Chris worked on “Solid-State Gallium NMR Spectroscopy”. Good luck to both in their exams.

April 2010

Sharon attended the annual St Andrews Awards, Prizes and Fellowships Dinner on 9th April, hosted by the Principal, in recognition of her award of the RSC/IOP the BRSG-NMRDG  Prize for Excellent Contribution to Magnetic Resonance by an Early Career Researcher.

Martin gave a talk in the computational chemistry series about his recent work, entitled “Investigating Disorder in Pyrochlore Ceramics by Solid-State NMR and First-Principles Calculations’.

Most of the group (Sharon, John, Karen, Valerie, Martin and Daniel) attended the ScotCHEM Computational Chemistry Symposium in Glasgow on April 8th. Sharon gave a talk entitled “Structure, Order and Dynamics in Solids: Multinuclear NMR and First-Principles Calculations”, while John, Martin and Karen presented posters on their work.

March 2010

Congratulations to Louisa and to Chris who gave their oral presentations for their undergraduate projects at the end of this month.

John, Martin and Karen were the first external visitors to the UK 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility in Warwick, on Feb 3rd-12th. They performed 89Y and 93Nb experiments at this high field strength. Thanks to Facility Manager Dinu for his help during this time. See here for more details on the Facility.

Visitors to the group this month included Dr Andrew Goodwin from Oxford, who gave a School Colloquium in St Andrews and spent time talking to John, Karen and Martin about their work on disorder. Also visiting were Dr Maria Baias (UCL) and Jerome Cuny (Rennes). Jerome is a PhD student in Rennes with Dr Laurent Le Polles and Dr Regis Gautier, but is spending some time at UCL working with Professor Chris Pickard. 

January 2010

Erika Davies, a PhD student from Melinda Duer’s group in Cambridge spent a few days with the group, working on some CASTEP calculations. Erika also gave a talk about the work she has been doing since starting her PhD in September.

Our paper “Dynamics on the Microsecond Timescale in Hydrous Silicates Studied by Solid-State 2H NMR Spectroscopy”, by John Griffin, Andrew Miller, Andrew Berry, Steve Wimperis and Sharon Ashbrook has been accepted for publication in Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. The paper contains a large body of work performed by Andrew Miller, during his fourth-year undergraduate project. Look out for further details on the Publication page.