Solid-state NMR spectroscopy is a powerful tool for analyzing matter. With PANACEA, it is no longer limited to the academic community at the forefront of this field. The broader public research sector and industry can now access this highly valuable technology throughout Europe. The project is coordinated by the Very High Field NMR Center of Lyon (CNRS / Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 / ENS de Lyon).
CNRS regional press release, Monday, February 21, 2022.
Thanks to recent advances in instrumentation and methodology, solid-state NMR spectroscopy is now uniquely positioned to characterize the structure, morphology, and dynamics of matter at the atomic level. This is particularly relevant in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals, cosmetics, food, fuels, polymers, and new energy sources. However, these cutting-edge methods rely on sophisticated and expensive equipment that is available only at a handful of national facilities. The scarcity of this instrumentation and the associated operational expertise has limited the adoption of these methods by a wider audience.
Funded by the European Union (€5 million) and coordinated by the CNRS through two of its laboratories (CRMN in Lyon and CEMHTI in Orléans), the PANACEA(1) project is now making NMR accessible to a wider range of European academic and industrial stakeholders. It brings together twelve partners(2) that provide access to seven national facilities in Europe and one facility in the United States. The consortium is announcing today the launch of its project submission platform: panacea-nmr.eu. All research resulting from the selected projects will benefit from access to spectrometers and support from experts in the field. This research will lead to open-access publications and data. The project will also allow researchers from industry to access these facilities for a fee. More specifically, the project offers transnational access (1,700 instrument days) to more than 30 unique NMR spectrometers ranging from 100 to 1,500 MHz, fully equipped to cover the most advanced solid-state NMR techniques and applications.
Finally, PANACEA will work to train a new generation of multidisciplinary chemists capable of making optimal use of NMR methods. The consortium will also enable its members to collaborate on joint research activities in order to conduct spectroscopic experiments for chemistry in new and more efficient ways. New software tools will also be developed to simplify the analysis and interpretation of NMR experiments for non-expert users, as well as new instruments and protocols that will extend the applicability of NMR to a wider range of solids. This includes new and innovative materials that are of interest to the broader academic and industrial communities: energy storage materials (batteries, supercapacitors), catalytic surfaces, polymer thin films, porous materials for gas capture, storage, or separation, and implants and drugs for pharmaceutical formulations.
The two French laboratories responsible for coordinating the project, managed by the CNRS:
- The Very High Field NMR Center of Lyon (CRMN, CNRS/Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1/ENS de Lyon)
- The “Extreme Conditions and Materials: High Temperature and Irradiation” Laboratory in Orléans (CEMHTI, CNRS)
Notes
- A Pan-European Solid-State NMR Infrastructure for Chemistry-Enabling Access
- National Center for Scientific Research (Lyon and Orléans, France; coordinators); University of Warwick (United Kingdom); Consorzio Interuniversitario Risonanze Magnetiche di Metallo Proteine (Florence, Italy); Stichting Katholieke Universiteit (Nijmegen, Netherlands); Aarhus University (Denmark); University of Aveiro (Portugal); University of Gothenburg (Sweden); Florida State University (Tallahassee, United States); Bruker Biospin GMBG (Rheinstetten, Germany); Mestrelab (Santiago de Compostela, Spain); Weizmann Institute of Science (Rehovot, Israel); École Polytechnique Fédérale (Lausanne, Switzerland).