Syllabus

Solid state NMR studies in condensed matter liquid-crystalline materials: The liquid-crystalline state, orientational order phase symmetry, molecular orientational order, the general time-independent NMR Hamiltonian for liquid crystalline samples, molecular order parameters, different representations of the order parameters, molecular order parameters and the symmetry of rigid molecules, director alignment, dipolar couplings between nuclei in rigid molecules in liquid-crystallline phases, deuterium quadrupolar splittings for rigid molecules in liquid-crystalline phases, chemical shift anisotropy for rigid molecules in liquid-crystalline phases, electron-mediated spin-spin coupling in liquid-crystalline samples, the determination of the structure, orientational order and conformations of flexible molecules in liquid-crystalline sample, determination of the conformationally dependent orientational order parameters and the conformational distributions of molecules in liquid-crystalline phases from NMR parameters, NMR experiments for liquid-crystalline samples, spectra of chiral and prochiral molecules in chiral liquid crystalline phases.

NMR studies of oxide glass structure: Introduction, the 'structure' of a glass, the extent of disorder, liquids vs. glasses, NMR techniques for studying glass structure, techniques for observing 1H and 19F in glasses, techniques that eliminate second-order quadrupolar broadening (DOR, DAS, MQMAS), spin-lattice relaxation and structure, applications to specific glass systems, boron-containing oxide glasses, silicate, aluminosilicate and germanate glasses, hydrogen-containing species in oxide glasses, thermal history effects, long-range structural anisotropy.