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

EAR-0235360 Stebins核磁共振(核磁共振)波谱是一种分析工具，可为地球和材料科学中具有广泛重要性的固体和熔体材料提供独特的原子级结构和动力学信息。该奖项用于升级已经使用了15年的仪器，以便在这一领域开展广泛的开创性研究，这些研究已经老化到几乎无法修复的地步。该仪器将继续进行的研究(也是由美国国家科学基金会资助的)强调了无序结晶和玻璃固体及其形成玻璃的液体前体的有趣和复杂的问题。对这类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，这些宏观性质是模拟和预测它们在自然界和技术上的大规模过程中的行为所必需的。例如，P.I.S团队正在量化地质铝硅酸盐玻璃和工业硼硅酸盐玻璃中网络阳离子之间不同类型氧键的比例，并使用这些数据来计算这种无序对熔体能量的影响，预测随温度的变化，并将由此产生的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，研究沸石矿物的结构，这些矿物在变质岩、放射性废物封存和石油工业中的催化等领域很重要，以及关于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.***