Labs & Learning Spaces

Take your research and academic experiences beyond the fundamentals in the chemistry department's labs and learning spaces. You'll find an extensive array of research instrumentation for hands-on, independent student use in both research and teaching laboratories.

The department also receives a high level of support and training from Peter Findeis, analytical instrumentation specialist, and Brian Breczinski, NMR instrumentation and computer specialist.

Bucknell Regional Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Facility

The Department of Chemistry operates two NMR spectrometers for use in student-faculty research and in coursework; the 600 MHz spectrometer is available for use by other institutions in the region.

- Varian 600 MHz four-channel, multinuclear NMR spectrometer (14.1 Tesla) with pulsed field gradients, biomolecular liquids probe, broadband probe, two-channel 3.2 mm magic angle spinning solids probe
- Varian 400 MHz two-channel, multinuclear NMR spectrometer (9.4 Tesla) with quad probe (¹H, ¹⁹F, ³¹P, ¹³C), pulsed field gradients, and premium shielded magnet
- Brian Breczinski
- David Rovnyak

Chemical Instrumentation Laboratories

One of three Bucknell students receiving Goldwater Scholarships, April Hurlock '23 plans to study childhood neurogenerative diseases while pursuing an M.D/Ph.D. Photo by Emily Paine, Communications

Instrumentation facilities operate on an open-door policy across Bucknell's campus. Chemistry students and faculty also have access to resources in other departments in the College of Arts & Sciences as well as the Environmental Engineering and Science Lab (EESL) within the College of Engineering.

- Agilent 1260 Infinity high-performance liquid chromatograph (HPLC)
- Agilent 1100 high-performance liquid chromatograph (HPLC) [x3]
- Shimadzu prep-scale high performance liquid chromatograph (HPLC)
- HP 6890 gas chromatograph w/ flame ionization detector (GC-FID) [x3]
- Agilent 7100 capillary electrophoresis system
- Beckman PA-800 capillary electrophoresis system
- Agilent G1601A capillary electrophoresis system [x3]
- GE Healthcare Akta fast protein liquid chromatograph (FPLC)
- BioTek Synergy H1MF multi-mode microplate reader
- MicroCal iTC200 Isothermal Titration Calorimeter
- Protein Technologies PS3 Peptide Synthesizer
- Perkin Elmer Tri-Carb 2910 TR liquid scintillation counter
- Waters Breeze gel permeation chromatograph
- Beckman JE and Avanti J-26 XP refrigerated centrifuges
- MJ Research PTC-150 thermal cycler
- BioRad gradient mini thermal cycler
- BioRad Gel Doc EZ system
- Sanyo and Panasonic -80° C freezers
- Cold room facility
- CME Discover microwave reactor
- MBraun LabStar Pro SP glovebox
- Tousimis Autosamdri-931 supercritical point dryer
- Innovative Technology PureSolv MD-5 solvent purification
- Teledyne Isco CombFlash Rf+ flash chromatography system
- Biotage Isolera One flash chromatography system
- Vacuum atmosphere glove box, model DL
- MTI 1200˚C Quartz Tube Furnace with Vacuum/Gas control
- BisonNet High Performance Computing: >200 CPU cores, 3 TB memory
- Density Functional Theory: Gaussian16; GaussView
- Crystallographic Elucidation: Cambridge Structural Database
- Molecular Dynamics: 6x GPU Supermicro Chassis, Dual Intel Scalable processors
- Agilent 6560 Ion Mobility Quadrupole/Time-of-Flight (IM-Q-ToF) Mass Spectrometer with Agilent 1290 Infinity ultra high performance liquid chromatograph
- Thermo Scientific Exactive Orbitrap (HR-MS) with ESI, APCI/ASAP, and ID-Cube ion sources, ultra-high pressure LC pump, and robotic autosampler
- Thermo Scientific iCAP-RQ inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICP-MS) with 193 nm laser ablation front-end [in EESL]
- Advion expressIon-L CMS with ESI, APCI/ASAP, TLC plate sampler
- Agilent 6890/5987 Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometer (GC-MS) with Gerstel TD3.5+ thermal desorber and multi-purpose sampler
- Horiba XploRA PLUS Confocal Raman Microscope
- Cary Eclipse fluorescence spectrometer [x2]
- Jobin Yvon Fluorolog FL3-22 spectrofluorimeter
- Nicolet iS19 Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectrometer
- Nicolet 4700 FT-IR spectrometer with attenuated total reflectance
- Thermo Evolution 699 dual beam UV-Visible spectrometer
- Hitachi U-2900 dual beam UV-Visible spectrometer
- Beckman DU 640 UV-Visible spectrometer
- Jasco P-2000 Series polarimeter
- Ecotech chemiluminescence NO_x analyzer
- 2B Technologies Model 205 dual beam O₃ analyzer
- Daylight Solutions mode hop free quantum cascade laser
- Continuum Surelite I-10 Nd:YAG laser
- Laser Components tunable mid-IR diode laser
- Edinborough Instruments mini-TEA pulsed CO₂ laser
- Veeco Multimode V atomic force microscope
- Gamry Interface 1010E potentiostat
- Bioanalytical Systems CV50/W voltammetric analyzer
- Harrick Plasma cleaner with gas flow mixer
- Bruker DE-tector dual-polarity ion mobility spectrometer
- Applied Photophysics RX2000 stopped-flow mixer
- Coy Lab's vinyl anaerobic chamber
- Environmental Engineering and Science Laboratory (including ion chromatography, TOC/TON, atomic absorption)
- Powder X-ray Diffractometer (Geology)
- Annular Flume (Geology)
- Micromeritics TriStar surface area and porosity analyzer (Chemical Engineering)
- Thermogravimetric analysis (Chemical Engineering)
- Differential scanning calorimetry (Chemical Engineering)
- Lyophilizer (Chemical Engineering)
- Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (Engineering)
- Imaging Center: confocal microscopy and Environmental SEM (Biology)
- Chemistry and Physics Machine Shop
- Project Development Lab (College of Engineering)
- Maker Spaces: Maker-E and Mooney Lab (College of Engineering)

Student-Faculty Research Laboratories

Novel chemical research conducted by students and faculty is a critical part of the Department of Chemistry's activities. Students are not required to participate in research, although a majority of students in each class year elect to join a research group for some amount of time beginning as early as their first year at Bucknell.

April Hurlock '23's study analyzes the reactions that chemicals in cigarette smoke create with the materials they cling to. Emily Paine, Communications
- Analytical & Atmospheric Chemistry on air-exposed interfaces motivated by indoor air quality and atmosphere-biosphere interactions (Prof. Collins)
- Aerosol Chemistry at the interface of chemistry, engineering and public health (Prof. Dutcher)
- Environmental Analytical Chemistry at the mineral-water interface; analysis of colloids in natural waters; atomic force microscopy and spectroscopic studies of geochemical systems (Prof. McGuire)
- Bioanalytical Chemistry of bile salt systems, chiral recognition and in-capillary reaction schemes (Prof. Strein)
- Bioinorganic chemistry to develop metallopeptide therapeutics to target protein-protein interactions and the development of bioanalytical disease detection devices (Prof. S. Smith)
- Enzymology to study the mechanism, regulation, and inhibition of proteins that modify DNA; drug discovery (Prof. Switzer)
- Coordination chemistry of transition metals in aqueous solution to study the assembly of multimetallic clusters (Prof. Kerber)
- Materials Chemistry of self-assembly frameworks and porous polymers for water treatment applications; crystallization of pharmaceuticals (Prof. B. Smith)
- Supramolecular chemistry, including macrocycle synthesis and host-guest interactions, and molecular switches, as well as covalent organic frameworks, conjugated polymers and redox chemistry of organic materials (Prof. Arslan)
- Total synthesis of peroxides, anti-malarial, anti-viral, and anti-tumor agents (Prof. Casteel)
- Reaction Method Development, catalysis, and natural products synthesis (Prof. Krout)
- Design and synthesis of catalysts made of transition metal complexes with useful properties (Prof. Stockland)
- Laser Spectroscopy for detailed studies of molecular interactions between gas molecules inspired by planetary atmospheres (Prof. Castle)
- Computational Chemistry on the theory of electrochemical reactions; mechanism(s) of N₂ reduction to NH₃ (Prof. Lam)
- Magnetic Resonance Methods to detect biomarkers of disease, study properties of guest-host complexes, and advance NMR sampling technology (Prof. Rovnyak)