5. Coupling

About this Lecture

Lecture

In the fifth mini-lecture, we learn about coupling, the phenomenon that lets us learn the position of chemical environments relative to each other. There are unique intricacies of this property which we learn about in this lecture, and how these intricacies are decoded to give us the information we need about a molecular structure.

Course

In this course, Dr Danny Allwood (Sheffield Hallam University) introduces the concept of NMR spectroscopy, a ubiquitous analytical tool used in all fields of chemistry to determine the structure of compounds. We start by: (i) investigating two types of NMR based on certain nuclei, 1H and 13C, and the sorts of information we can gather from NMR spectra of these nuclei; then (ii) learning about the different regions of a given NMR spectrum, understanding that certain environments and functional groups are likely to be found to be within a defined region of chemical space; (iii) and then beginning to understand why this happens; before (iv) moving onto the concept of integration, specifically with 1H spectra; and then (v) understanding how nuclei in adjacent environments affect each other’s peaks on a spectrum by a process known as coupling; before finally (vi) showing the NMR spectra of isomers, and realising their differences and understanding why this happens.

Lecturer

Dr Danny Allwood joined Sheffield Hallam University from the University of Cambridge, where he undertook a PhD (2008-2012) and post-doctoral research (2012-2015) with Professor Steven V. Ley CBE FRS. Prior to this, he attained my undergraduate degree at the University of Warwick (2004-2008). His current research programme is focused on the development of practical synthetic and catalytic organic transformations.