Structural Determination

AY2025/2026 Semester 1

This course is divided into two parts. Part I: The aim of this part concerns the use of NMR chemical shifts to elucidate structures of organic molecules. The specific focus is to learn how different (common) functional groups and non-covalent interactions (in organic chemistry) affect the 1H and 13C NMR chemical shifts of molecules. Part II: The aim of this part is to show how you can obtain structural information on molecular compounds. We will begin with some general considerations in structural determination. This will be followed by more details on two very important techniques - NMR spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography. The former is a powerful method for studying molecules in solution and the latter for structures in the solid state. For the former, we will be looking at some concepts essential to an understanding of NMR spectroscopy, phenomena which can affect the appearance of an NMR spectrum, and some useful NMR techniques that can be used to study molecular structures and dynamics.