Supporting Research Excellence in Chemistry at the University of Bath through Provision of Key Equipment Enhancements

The Department of Chemistry at the University of Bath is a leading research school in Chemistry, with a diverse and substantial portfolio of excellent research. This is augmented by strong links outside the discipline and across a range of partners, which is enabled by an outward looking approach to collaboration, with heavy involvement in major national and international collaborations as both leader and partner. Bath Chemistry also has strong industrial links. The high quality and volume of Bath Chemistry research is supported by access to modern laboratory and equipment space, augmented by a recent increase in available laboratory space on the Bath campus showing the recognition of this quality and volume by the University. However, with recent dramatic increases in research activity, there is an urgent need to update and extend the portfolio of equipment available to our researchers. Taking a strategic view of these requirements, we have identified four main areas where equipment enhancements will have a high immediate impact on our research capabilities and outputs. These are a single crystal X-ray diffraction suite, a 400MHz NMR spectrometer, a MALDI-TOF/TOF Mass Spectrometer and a UHPLC Orbitrap Mass Spectrometer. The recently delivered expansion of chemistry research space is well suited to hosting these core equipment enhancements, whose installation will be further supported by the University. These pieces of core Chemistry equipment would offer not only much more capacity for our large and rapidly growing research effort, but this provision will also open up new areas of investigation for our researchers and their many collaborators.