NMR spectrometers consist of a strong magnet, a radiofrequency transmitter, and a detector attached to a computer console for recording spectra of samples containing NMR-active nuclei. In first-generation NMR instruments called continuous-wave spectrometers, the resonance frequencies of the nuclei are determined by frequency-sweep or field-sweep methods. The magnetic field strength is fixed and the rf signal is swept in the former, while the radiofrequency signal is fixed and the magnetic field...

At room temperature, the chair conformer of cyclohexane undergoes rapid ring flipping between two equivalent chair conformers at a rate of approximately 105 times per second. These two chair conformers are in equilibrium. The rapid ring flipping results in the interconversion of the axial proton to an equatorial proton and an equatorial to the axial proton. Such interconversions are too rapid and cannot be detected on the NMR timescale. Hence, the NMR spectrometer cannot distinguish between the...

The 1D NMR spectrum of large and complex molecules like natural products has complicated splitting patterns and overlapping signals, which can be easily interpreted using 2-dimensional (2D) NMR. Unlike 1D NMR, 2D NMR has two frequency axes that provide the coupling information between the nucleus A and nucleus B in a molecule. The process from which 2D spectra are obtained has four steps.
The first step is the preparation period, during which nucleus A is excited with a radiofrequency pulse.

Heteronuclear single-quantum correlation spectroscopy (HSQC) is a 2D NMR technique that reveals one-bond correlations between hydrogen and a heteronucleus. The HSQC experiment is similar to the heteronuclear correlation experiment (HETCOR) but is more sensitive. In the HSQC spectrum, the proton chemical shift is plotted on the horizontal F2 axis, while the 13C chemical shift is plotted on the vertical F1 axis. The corresponding proton and 13C spectra are also shown. The HSQC contour plot does...

The axial and equatorial protons in cyclohexane can be distinguished by performing a variable-temperature NMR experiment. In this process, except for one proton, the remaining eleven protons are replaced by deuterium. The deuterium substitution avoids the possible peak splitting caused by the spin-spin coupling between the adjacent protons. The remaining proton flips between the axial and equatorial positions.

Homonuclear correlation spectroscopy (COSY) is a powerful technique used in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to study the correlations between nuclei of the same type within a molecule. It provides information about scalar couplings between adjacent nuclei, which helps determine connectivity and structural information. There are several COSY variants, each with its unique strengths and experimental parameters.
COSY90 is the standard two-dimensional (2D) COSY experiment that...