December 2013

Sharon was presented with her RSE MakDougall Brisbane Medal for Early Career Research in the Physical Sciences on 2nd December in an event at the RSE in Edinburgh.

Sharon, Valerie, Scott, Paula, Henri and Andrew attended the NMRDG Christmas Meeting at the Institute of Child Health. Henri gave a talk entitled “Novel Conversion Pulse Schemes for MQMAS Experiments” at this conference as a result of his poster prize win at the NMRDG Postgraduate Meeting in Edinburgh.

The Magnetic Resonance Group Christmas dinner took place at the Dolls House restaurant in St Andrews early this month.

November 2013

At the St Andrews day graduation ceremony Sharon was inducted as a Professor. During the ceremony she was presented with a book by the Principal. Also this month Sharon gave a talk entitled “Structure, Disorder and Dynamics in Solids, Multinuclear NMR and First-Principles Calculations” in the School of Physics in St Andrews.

Scott visited the UK 850 Solid-State NMR facility this month to carry out 67Zn experiments on a range of zinc compounds in order to study the feasibility of these experiments on Zeolitic Imidazolate Frameworks, a sub-class of Metal-Organic Framework, at high field.

October 2013

New PhD student Andrew Rankin joins the group this month. Andrew will be working on NMR of inorganic catalysts and is jointly funded by SASOL Technology UK Ltd. See here for more information on Andrew.

Valerie’s paper “Application of NMR Crystallography to the Determination of the Mechanism of Charge-Balancing in Organocation-Templated AlPO STA-2” was highlighted on the inside cover of the special edition of Cryst.Eng.Comm. on NMR Crystallography. Click for the full image.

Two new 1.9 mm MAS probes were delivered this month - a triple-resonance HFX probe for the 400 and a double-resonance HX MAS probe for the 600.

Daniel and Henri spent some time at the 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility in Warwick this month, working on 71Ga STMAS measurements, and new pulses for use in MQMAS.

September 2013

The group welcomes a number of new undergraduate project students this month. Hanna is in her fourth year of her MChem degree and will be extending Daniel’s recent work on paramagnetic Cu-based MOFs. Rob is in his final year of his MChem degree and will be alongside Scott using 89Y and 119Sn NMR to investigate ceramic materials proposed for waste encapsulation. The group is also joined by James and Martin who will be jointly supervised by Dr Iain Smellie and Daniel.

The book chapter written by Sharon, Daniel and John has been published this month in the “Local Structural Characterisation” volume of the Inorganic Materials Series, published by Wiley. The chapter gives a basic introduction to solid-state NMR spectroscopy, with a particular focus on applications for inorganic solids.

Valerie, Daniel, Paula, Scott and Henri attend the 8th Alpine Conference on Solid-State NMR in Chamonix from 8-12 September. Daniel presented a poster on his work on GaPO phases, while both Scott and Valerie presented recent experimental and computational work on AlPOs. Henri’s poster described his work on composite pulses for use in MQMAS experiments, and Paula’s poster described the synthesis and characterisation (using Se NMR) of P-Se heterocycles. Click here for photos.

Collaborator Richard Walton visited the group on 5th September to talk about ongoing projects on microporous phosphates.

August 2013

Sharon was promoted to full professor at the University of St Andrews this month. The group went out to celebrate this exciting news!

Sharon, Valerie, Daniel and Scott attended the CASTEP workshop held in Oxford. Sharon gave a talk describing how the group have combined experiment and calculation to study disordered materials over the last few years, while Valerie, Daniel and Scott all presented posters on their most recent work.

Valerie’s paper “Application of NMR Crystallography to the Determination of the Mechanism of Charge-Balancing in Organocation-Templated AlPO STA-2” was accepted for publication in Cryst. Eng. Comm. this month. The paper will form part of a special edition of the journal on NMR Crystallography. See the Publications page for more details.

Also published this month is Daniel’s paper entitled “Exploiting Periodic First-Principles Calculations in NMR Spectroscopy of Disordered Solids” which appeared in a special edition of Accounts in Chemical Research on Frontiers in Solid-State NMR Technology. The edition was also dedicated to Ivano Bertini. See the Publications page for more details.

This month the group welcomed back former postdoc Dr John Griffin who visited to discuss some ongoing work on silicate minerals. John is currently doing postdoctoral research with Professor Clare Grey in Cambridge.

July 2013

John and Sharon’s review entitled “Solid-State NMR of High-Pressure Silicates in the Earth’s Mantle” was published in Annual Reports on NMR Spectroscopy this month. This 91 page article details NMR work on high-pressure minerals both by the Ashbrook group and others in the last few years. Also published on the web this month is Martin Peel’s paper “Unusual Phase Behaviour in the Piezooelectric Perovskite System, LixNa1–xNbO3”, which was accepted in Inorganic Chemistry. See the Publications page for more details.

Akiko Sasaki from the Wimperis group at the University of Glasgow visited the group this month to carry out some CASTEP calculations. While she was visiting Akiko gave a talk entitled “High-Resolution Solid-State NMR of Half-Integer Quadrupolar Nuclei: Natural Abundance 33S STMAS".

Another visitor to the group this month was collaborator Dr Karl  Whittle from the University of Sheffield, who talked to Scott and Sharon during his visit over their work on pyrochlore wasteforms.

June 2013

Congratulations to Martin Mitchell and Valerie Seymour who had their PhD graduations this month! Also graduating this month were Ian and Laurie (BSc Chemistry and Maths) and Harriet (MChem). Particular congratulations to Laurie who was awarded the prize for the best graduating BSc student on a Chemistry course.

Welcome to Angus Ritchie who has been awarded a Carnegie Scholarship to carry out a six-week summer project with the group. Angus will be working with Sharon and Daniel on 2H NMR of AlPOs and on making 13C enriched MOFs.

The group attended the Third Annual Meeting of the St Andrews Centre for Magnetic Resonance this month. The event comprised a poster session, a day of talks on NMR, EPR and computation and a conference dinner. Sharon gave a talk on her recent work on silicates and Daniel, Valerie, Martin, Scott, Henri, Paula and Laurie presented posters on their recent work. Congratulations to Daniel who won the poster prize for his poster entitled “Predicting NMR Parameters from the Structures of Aluminophosphates”.

The group also attended the NMRDG postgraduate meeting held in Edinburgh. Sharon gave a keynote lecture entitled “Structure, Order and Dynamics in Solids: Multinuclear NMR and First-Principles Calculations”, and Henri a talk entitled “Simulation-Assisted Fast-Amplitude-Modulated Conversion Pulses for Multiple-Quantum MAS NMR Experiments”. Valerie, Daniel, Martin, Henri and Paula presented posters. Congratulations to Henri who won the poster prize!

Daniel, Valerie and Scott presented posters at the annual ScotCHEM Computational Chemistry Meeting, held this year in St Andrews.

Sharon attended the 18th ISMAR conference in Rio de Janerio this month, where she gave a talk entitled “Hunting for Hydrogen in Wadsleyite”. The conference covered all aspects of magnetic resonance and was held in a hotel right beside the beach. She also took the opportunity to visit some of the famous sights of the city. See here for pictures.

Megan Russell has started a summer project in the group (jointly supervised with Iain Smellie). Megan will be developing experiments for schools to fit with the new Curriculum for Excellence.

Valerie’s paper with collaborator Russell Morris has been published in Nature Chemistry, and Martin Mitchell’s paper with collaborators in France was accepted for publication this month. See the Publications page for more details.

April 2013

Congratulations to Daniel who was appointed as Solid-State NMR Facility Manager in the department this month. Daniel will start the post while writing up the final parts of his PhD thesis.

The group attended the UK 850 MHz solid-state NMR facility annual symposium at the University of Warwick. Daniel gave a talk entitled “Solid-State NMR Investigation of GaPO-34” and Sharon a talk entitled “Hunting for Hydrogen in Wadsleyite: Multinuclear Solid-State NMR and First-Principles Calculations”.

Congratulations to the four undergraduate students who finished their projects in the group this month. Ian completed a report  on “17O NMR Investigation of Pyrochlore Ceramics for the Encapsulation of Radioactive Waste”, Emily on “17O Solid-State NMR for the Characterisation of Guest-Loaded Framework Materials” and Laurie on ”NMR Investigation of the Hydration of GaPO-34”. Ian and Laurie will graduate in June, while Emily has one more year remaining on her MChem Chemistry with Maths course. Harriet’s project was jointly supervised by Iain Smellie, and she will also graduate later this year.

Martin spent some time at the 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility in Warwick this month, working on 23Na DOR measurements.

Henri led a group wine tasting this month where he taught the group how to look, smell and taste a variety of French wines. See here for pictures.

March 2013

John’s paper “Structural Chemistry of Water in the Inner-Earth: A Solid-State NMR Study of Hydrous Wadsleyite” appeared in Chem. Sci this month. This work, with collaborators Dr Andrew Berry and Professor Steve Wimperis is the result over challenging multinuclear NMR experiments, carried out both in St Andrews and at the UK 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility. Also accepted for publication is Sharon and Daniel’s invited contribution (entitled “Exploiting Periodic First-Principles Calculations in NMR Spectroscopy of Disordered Materials”) to a special edition of Acc. Chem. Res. See the Publications page for more details. Sharon has now published 100 papers - and so the group went out to celebrate.

Sharon was invited to give a seminar (entitled “Structure, Disorder and Dynamics in Silicates: Multinuclear NMR and First-Principles Calculations”) at Cardiff University this month. She was also able to visit the group of Professor Kenneth Harris (a collaborator on the CCP-NC project) and catch up with ex-Wimperis group member, Dr Colan Hughes.

Many congratulations to Henri, who travelled back to Paris for his graduation this month. He was awarded a diploma from the ENS  (major in Chemistry and minor in Physics) after his three years of study.

Scott spent 6 days at the UK 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility in Warwick this month, carrying out 17O NMR experiments to study the pyrochlore to defect fluorite transition in zirconates. 

February 2013

Papers published this month include Karen’s paper “A Structural Study of La1−xYxScO3, Combining Neutron Diffraction, Solid-State NMR and First-Principles DFT Calculations” published in J. Phys. Chem. C and Martin Mitchell’s paper  “The Pyrochlore to Defect Fluorite Phase Transition in Y2Sn2–xZrxO7” with collaborators in ANSTO, Sydney, published in RSC Advances. See the Publications page for more details.

Sharon and Daniel spent a day in Glasgow to meet with collaborators Professor Richard Walton (Warwick) and Professor Steve Wimperis (Glasgow). They also were able to attend Richard’s seminar on his recent work exploiting hydrothermal synthesis. 

Daniel spent 5 days at the UK 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility in Warwick, carrying out 71Ga NMR of microporous gallophosphates.

January 2013

Congratulations to Dr Valerie Seymour who successfully passed her PhD viva with Professor Jeremy Titman (Nottingham) and Professor Russell Morris (St Andrews) this month. Her thesis focussed upon the combined investigation (using multinuclear NMR methods and first-principles calculations) of inorganic materials, including phosphate frameworks, MOFs and hibonite minerals. Valerie is now undertaking post-doctoral research in the group.

Martin P gave a talk entitled “Unusual Phase Behaviour in LixNa1–xNbO3” at the UK Ferroelectrics Conference in Sheffield this month, where he presented some of his interesting results on the observation of unexpected phase transitions in niobate-based perovskites.

Valerie spent six days at the UK 850 MHz Solid-State NMR Facility in Warwick this month, carrying out 17O NMR experiments on ionothermally-enriched framework materials. Martin P also spent time at the facility for some of his work on niobate perovskites.