Pushing nuclear magnetic resonance sensitivity limits with microfluidics and photo-chemically induced dynamic nuclear polarization.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 29317665.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-017-02575-0 and PMC identifier 5760532.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Among the methods to enhance the sensitivity of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, small-diameter NMR coils (microcoils) are promising tools to tackle the study of mass-limited samples. Alternatively, hyperpolarization schemes based on dynamic nuclear polarization techniques provide strong signal enhancements of the NMR target samples. Here we present a method to effortlessly perform photo-chemically induced dynamic nuclear polarization in microcoil setups to boost NMR signal detection down to sub-picomole detection limits in a 9.4T system (400 MHz 1H Larmor frequency). This setup is unaffected by current major drawbacks such as the use of high-power light sources to attempt uniform irradiation of the sample, and accumulation of degraded photosensitizer in the detection region. The latter is overcome with flow conditions, which in turn open avenues for complex applications requiring rapid and efficient mixing that are not easily achievable on an NMR tube without resorting to complex hardware.