Carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance

Carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance (most commonly known as carbon-13 NMR or C NMR or sometimes simply referred to as carbon NMR) is the application of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to carbon. It is analogous to proton NMR (1H NMR) and allows the identification of carbon atoms in an organic molecule just as proton NMR identifies hydrogen atoms. As such C NMR is an important tool in chemical structure elucidation in organic chemistry. C NMR detects only the 13C isotope of carbon, whose natural abundance is only 1.1%, because the main carbon isotope, 12C, is not detectable by NMR since it has zero net spin.