Posts Tagged ‘Katherine Mirica’
Magnetic Levitation: Because TLC Plates are so 20th Century
by mitch on Dec 14 2008 (2790 Views)Mirica et al. had an awesome JACS communication out last week. They use magnets to track the progress of reactions. A schematic is shown below.
By using a paramagnetic solution (GdCl3) and polymeric beads as their solid support, they monitor the progress of reactions as a function of their beads’ height. The setup is very sensitive to the density (g/ml) of the beads, thus as the beads are chemically modified the height changes. The beads cluster together when they are mostly all starting material or product. They spread out as different beads take different amounts of time to become fully reacted. Some images from their paper and supporting information really highlight this effect.
What else can we use magnets in the lab for, ideas anyone?
Mitch
