Upgrade of a 400 MHz NMR spectrometer for Research on Solid and Molten Materials in the Earth and Materials Sciences

核磁共振（NMR）光谱学是一种分析工具，为固体和熔融材料的原子尺度结构和动力学提供独特的信息，在地球和材料科学中具有广泛的重要性。该奖项资助了一项仪器的升级，该仪器已经使用了15年，在该领域开展了广泛的开创性研究，该仪器已经老化到几乎无法修复的地步。该仪器（同样由美国国家科学基金会资助）将继续进行的研究强调了无序晶体和玻璃状固体及其形成玻璃的液体前体的有趣和复杂问题。这些材料的核磁共振研究极大地促进了对宏观性质的基本理解，这些性质需要在自然界和技术的大规模过程中建模和预测它们的行为。例如，私家侦探他的团队正在量化地质铝硅酸盐玻璃和技术硼硅酸盐玻璃中网络阳离子之间不同类型氧连接的比例，并利用这些数据计算这种无序对熔体能量学的影响，预测温度变化，并将所得热力学性质与自由能、相平衡和粘性流动联系起来。其他正在进行的项目包括研究氟和氢等元素在高科技光学玻璃中的作用，沸石矿物的结构在变质岩、放射性废物封存和石油工业催化等多种领域的重要作用，以及天然生物材料和有机环境污染物的新工作

EAR-0235360StebbinsNuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is an analytical tool that provides unique information on atomic-scale structure and dynamics for solid and molten materials of wide importance in the earth and materials sciences. This award funds an upgrade of an instrument that has been used for 15 years to carry out a wide range of pioneering studies in this field, that had aged to the point of being almost non-repairable. The research to be continued with this instrument (also funded by NSF) emphasizes the intriguing and complex problems of disordered crystalline and glassy solids, and their glass-forming liquid precursors. NMR studies of such materials have contributed greatly to the fundamental understanding of the macroscopic properties that are needed to model and predict their behavior in large-scale processes in nature and in technology. For example, the P.I.'s group is quantifying the proportions of different types of oxygen linkages between network cations in geological aluminosilicate glasses and in technological borosilicate glasses, and is using these data to calculate effects of this disorder on the energetics of the melts, to predict changes with temperature, and to relate the resulting thermodynamic properties to free energy, phase equilibria, and viscous flow. Other ongoing projects include studying the role of elements such as fluorine and hydrogen in high-tech optical glasses, the structure of zeolite minerals important in areas as diverse as metamorphic rocks, radioactive waste sequestration, and catalysis in the oil industry, and new work on natural biological materials and organic environmental contaminants.***