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Article Excerpt
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
They may be investigating topics as diverse as bird migration or quantum information processing, protein structure and hydrogen storage materials, but what links the research of nearly a dozen groups across the science departments at the University of Oxford is electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy. Until recently, this technique was the domain of a small circle of chemists specialising on electron spin, but the advent of user-friendly instrumentation and of interdisciplinary research centres has broadened the user base considerably.
In Oxford, chemist Peter Edwards and colleagues set up CAESR, the Centre for Advanced ESR, as an interdisciplinary research centre in 2006. Funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Councils, CAESR now hosts a variety of research projects across all disciplines.
'Our aim is to encourage a multidisciplinary approach to the development of ESR that is driven by the strong symbiosis of methodology design and technique application. The 11 investigators involved with the centre have very diverse projects, which cover the disciplines of chemistry, biological chemistry, material sciences, and physics,' says facility manager Jeffrey Harmer.
But if ESR is so widely applicable, why has it been so rarely used until now? Electrons normally come in pairs with opposite spins that cancel each other out. To use electron spins as an analytical tool, one must either study the relatively rare molecules that have unpaired electrons, for example, radicals, or introduce a solitary spin as a label into the molecule of interest.
Studies with naturally occurring, or at least intrinsic, radicals include those involving carbon materials for hydrogen storage, where the detection...
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