Structure elucidation using NMR spectroscopy has become a vital part of the toolkit of modern synthetic chemistry. Characterisation of final products, quality control of production, analysis of complex mixtures in synthetic method development, and structure elucidation of isolated natural products are examples where NMR spectroscopy is a part of daily routine. The two factors that usually limit the applicability of NMR are resolution and sensitivity. The experimental method described in this Account, real-time pure shift acquisition, yields heteronuclear correlation spectra such as HSQC that offer significant improvements in both resolution and sensitivity, at negligible cost to the analyst. The advantages that real-time pure shift acquisition enjoys over conventional experiments are discussed and illustrated with selected examples including carbohydrate and alkaloid mixtures. Advanced data acquisition and processing techniques that reduce experiment time and are easily combined with pure shift NMR methods are also described.1 Introduction2 Simultaneous Sensitivity and Resolution Enhancement Using Real-Time Acquisition in HSQC3 Processing Pure Shift Data4 Pulse Sequences for Real-Time Pure Shift HSQC5 Conclusions and Future Perspectives
The importance of asking “how and why?” in natural product structure elucidation
