Off-the-Shelf Gd(NO3)3 as an Efficient High-Spin Metal Ion Polarizing Agent for Magic Angle Spinning Dynamic Nuclear Polarization #DNPNMR

Published: Friday, 16 September 2022 - 10:00 -0400

Author: Thorsten Maly

Elliott, Stuart J., Benjamin B. Duff, Ashlea R. Taylor-Hughes, Daniel J. Cheney, John P. Corley, Subhradip Paul, Adam Brookfield, et al. “Off-the-Shelf Gd(NO 3 ) 3 as an Efficient High-Spin Metal Ion Polarizing Agent for Magic Angle Spinning Dynamic Nuclear Polarization.” The Journal of Physical Chemistry B 126, no. 33 (August 25, 2022): 6281–89.

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcb.2c04184.

Magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy experiments are widely employed in the characterization of solid media. The approach is incredibly versatile but deleteriously suffers from low sensitivity, which may be alleviated by adopting dynamic nuclear polarization methods, resulting in large signal enhancements. Paramagnetic metal ions such as Gd3+ have recently shown promising results as polarizing agents for 1H, 13C, and 15N nuclear spins. We demonstrate that the widely available and inexpensive chemical agent Gd(NO3)3 achieves significant signal enhancements for the 13C and 15N nuclear sites of [2-13C,15N]glycine at 9.4 T and ∼105 K. Analysis of the signal enhancement profiles at two magnetic fields, in conjunction with electron paramagnetic resonance data, reveals the solid effect to be the dominant signal enhancement mechanism. The signal amplification obtained paves the way for efficient dynamic nuclear polarization without the need for challenging synthesis of Gd3+ polarizing agents.