Capital Award for Core Equipment 2022/23, National Research Facility for Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) spectroscopy, also known as Electron Spin Resonance (ESR), is possibly the most powerful technique for characterisation of paramagnetic materials, i.e. that contain unpaired electrons. Unpaired electrons give rise to the magnetic and electronic properties of materials and often govern reactivity when present, hence understanding their environment and behaviour is important.

Paramagnets are ubiquitous from biological processes to magnetic materials; hence EPR is an essential tool in physics, chemistry, materials and biological sciences.

The EPSRC funds a National Research Facility (NRF) for EPR, located in the Photon Science Institute (PSI) at The University of Manchester (UoM), providing access to state-of-the art experimental techniques and expertise for the UK academic community. Crudely, there are two ways to do EPR spectroscopy: continuous wave (cw) EPR and pulsed EPR, which give complementary information.

Pulsed EPR is a much higher resolution technique (allowing measurement of much weaker interactions involving the unpaired electron) and also gives access to time-resolved information. However, such experiments can require access to very low temperatures (