Bio-Medical Magnetic Resonance Facility

The School of Health Sciences – Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and Magnetic Resonance (MRI) Facilities are located at the Campbelltown, Hawkesbury and Parramatta campuses.

Campbelltown NMR Facility

This is the university's premier research facility for magnetic resonance and is amongst the best of its kind for NMR diffusion and MRI diffusion experiments. The staff of the facility is internationally recognised for the development and application of magnetic resonance based diffusion studies. The BMRF forms a node of the Australian National Imaging Facility (opens in a new window).

This facility houses four nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometers:

• Bruker Avance III 600 MHz widebore spectrometer for very high resolution NMR imaging and NMR diffusion measurements of very slowly diffusing species.
• Bruker Avance II 500 MHz widebore spectrometer for very high resolution NMR imaging and NMR diffusion measurements of very slowly diffusing species and high resolution magic angle spinning (HR-MAS).
• Bruker Avance 400 MHz spectrometer for diffusion measurements in low viscosity liquids and normal spectral identification of molecules.
• Varian 300 MHz spectrometer for routine usage.

Find out more (opens in a new window) details and examples of applications.

Hawkesbury NMR Facility

This facility consists of a Varian UNITY-Plus 300 MHz wide bore spectrometer for high resolution NMR imaging (pictured).

Example applications include:

• Structure determination of  natural products, organic, inorganic and biomolecules.
• Studying interactions between the molecular systems.
• Multinuclear solution NMR Studies.
• MRI of plant material.
• Chemical shift selective imaging of seeds (non-invasive histochemistry).
• ¹H and ¹⁹F-MRI of pharmaceuticals.
• The facility is also used for undergraduate and post-graduate teaching.

Parramatta NMR Facility

The facility consists of Bruker 300 MHz solid/solution and 200 MHz solid state NMR spectrometers. This facility has high resolution solid state and solution NMR capabilities.

Example applications include:

• Structure determination of natural products, organic, inorganic and biomolecules in solution.
• Multinuclear solution NMR studies.
• Structural characterisation and dynamics studies of polymers in solution and solid states.
• Multinuclear MAS studies of nanomaterials and polymer systems.
• Studies involving structure-function relationships of bioactive molecules derived from medicinal herbs/plants.