Physical Principles of Chirality in NMR

How can we study one of the most elusive molecular properties, chirality, using nuclear interactions with the magnetic field that are apparently insensitive to handedness? This book answers this question from the physicochemical point of view by providing a clear, coherent, and comprehensive review of methods used in NMR studies of chirality.

Presented arguments based on fundamental physical and chemical laws and in-depth descriptions of new methods utilizing purely physical interactions are mainly addressed to spectroscopists in both academia and industry. The introductory chapters provide the reader with the basics of NMR spectroscopy as a tool for the study of chiral compounds, and those more interested in the methods of chiral discrimination will benefit from the brief description of their common points and reasons why some of them may or may not work. In the following chapters, the book shows rapid progress in a newly emerging field of chirality-sensitive NMR, in particular, a search for effects that give direct information about the absolute configuration of a molecule.

Piotr Garbacz graduated in chemistry from the University of Warsaw and completed his PhD thesis devoted to molecular hydrogen under the supervision of Professor R.E. Wasylishen and Professor K. Jackowski in 2014.

From 2012 to 2015, he completed internships at the University of Western Sydney, the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and postdoctoral fellowships in the Max Planck Institute of Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart and Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Intenses in Grenoble.

He studied with A.D. Buckingham and P. Fischer chirality-sensitive NMR phenomena induced by the electric field and for his works in this field was awarded a habilitation degree in 2018. Since 2019, he has been Head of the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Laboratory at the Faculty of Chemistry at University of Warsaw. His research interest is focused on ultra-precise determination of NMR parameters from the gas-phase measurements and investigations into how a chiral molecule interacts with a radiofrequency electromagnetic field.