Oxford Instruments Launches New Benchtop, Cryogen-free NMR

Oxford Instruments, one of the world’s leading NMR specialists, has launched Pulsar™ - an affordable benchtop, cryogen-free NMR analyzer that offers convenience without the special requirements associated with superconducting magnets. Pulsar’s small footprint is suitable for most labs and industrial production areas.

Pulsar allows even the non-expert user to quickly and easily establish routine experiments. A team at the Institute of Food Research (IFR), Norwich, UK, led by Dr Kate Kemsley, Head of the Analytical Sciences Unit, funded by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), has been trialing Pulsar.

“We have a high-resolution NMR facility within the Analytical Sciences Unit, but most of the people in the team have backgrounds other than NMR spectroscopy - FTIR, chemometrics, statistics. However, this has been no barrier to getting started with Pulsar. We have all very quickly learned how to collect spectra, check line widths, and adjust the XYZ shim. Even the theoretician who hadn't done a practical experiment since undergraduate days is hooked”, says Dr Kemsley. “We have been impressed by how easy it is to perform a high-throughput experiment - a recent Masters student carrying out his final year research project with us was able to produce 200 quality spectra in a matter of days."

Jeff Jefferson, General Manager, Industrial Analysis, says:

“We are delighted at the feedback from our partnership with IFR and the support from the TSB. We are proud to launch such an affordable, accessible, uncomplicated NMR analyzer and we know that Pulsar will open up the advantages of NMR analysis to a much wider audience.”

Pulsar requires a standard mains electrical supply and is offered at a fraction of the selling price of current high field NMR instruments with virtually no on-going running costs. It incorporates a 1.4T (60MHz proton resonance) rare-earth permanent magnet with superior homogeneity, providing outstanding spectral resolution, generating routine spectra in seconds. Instrument control comes from a seamless workflow package, while the processing and manipulation of data is achieved using the industry-leading Mnova NMR software from Mestrelab.