Mixture analysis by NMR under spin diffusion conditions – MIXSPINDIFF

The identification of organic molecules in mixture is a crucial issue in the vast majority of human activities related to chemistry (healthcare, energy, materials, etc.). Transformation processes that lead from natural resources, either from fossil carbon industry or biomass exploitation, to low-value products in large amounts or to high-value speciality products including pharmaceutical and cosmetic active ingredients, rarely produce chemically pure compounds. In the current state of knowledge, mixture analysis remains a necessity and effective means to carry it out remain to be developed.

In this context, the goal of the MIXSPINDIFF project is to provide the academic and industrial actors of organic synthetic and natural product chemistry with an innovative and promising analytical tool based on the spin-diffusion phenomenon and dedicated to mixture analysis of small molecules by means of liquid-state NMR, without resorting to any physical separation of mixture components. Applications concern mainly the pharmaceutic, chemistry and cosmetic industries.

This project is based on the development of analytical methods suitable for the structural characterization of organic compounds of low molecular weight in a mixture, either obtained by synthesis (products of interest or by-products) or extraction from natural or biotechnological resources since the structural characterization of these compounds is a mandatory step for establishing their structure-property and/or structure-function relationships.

The MIXSPINDIFF project is structured into three task packages: 1) the search for new efficient viscous solvents or solvent blends suitable for mixture analysis, 2) the design of new NMR experimental methods for the production of mixture component spectra suitable for structure determination and 3) application of our analytical methods to the investigation of essential oils in viscous media for assessing its effectiveness and robustness.

The MIXSPINDIFF project will be undertaken at the Reims Institute of Molecular Chemistry (ICMR, UMR 7312 CNRS) of the University of Reims-Champagne-Ardenne (URCA) which hosts research teams in various aspects of molecular chemistry. Dr. Pedro Lameiras, hired in 2009 as an associate professor in the “Chimie des Substances Naturelles (CSN)” team at ICMR, will be the coordinator of the project MIXSPINDIFF and will have the opportunity to increase his responsibility level inside ICMR by building up his own research team.

The MIXSPINDIFF project will address several issues in mixture analysis by means of NMR and will have scientific impact in physical chemistry, analytical chemistry and chemical synthesis. All the methods developed throughout the project will be available to the scientific community in the form of user-friendly downloadable protocols. These methods will also be available through the ”PlAneT” analytical facility, at the University of Reims-Champagne-Ardenne, for users from both academia and the private sectors. The new promising tools elaborated during this project will be suitable for a broad range of applications in the study of small molecules in mixture by NMR spectroscopy.