Press Release
NIH Funds Development of THz resonator for solid-state DNP-NMR Probes
SBIR Grant Awarded to Bridge12 for Dynamic Nuclear Polarization
**Framingham, Mass. – July 18th, 2013 – **Bridge12 Technologies, a leading provider of terahertz (THz) technology for applications in science, medicine, security, and defense, announces it has received a National Institute of Health’s small business innovation research (SBIR) grant for the development of a THz resonator for solid-state DNP-NMR probes. Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP) can increase the sensitivity of a NMR experiment by several orders of magnitude, accelerating experiments that typically require weeks to complete in minutes.
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is used broadly across many disciplines, such as analytical chemistry, structural biology or drug discovery and scientists that are using NMR are often challenged by the low sensitivity of NMR, which slows down research and increases research costs.
In recent years, Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP) has proven to be vastly successful in increasing sensitivity in solid-
state NMR experiments, achieving enhancement factors of > 180 at 400 MHz (1H Larmor Frequency) corresponding to a factor of 32,400 in time savings. In other words, an experiment that would otherwise run for three weeks can be performed in less than a minute. This significantly increased overall sensitivity accelerates experiments for analytical applications of NMR spectroscopy as well as the structural characterization of bio-macromolecules or pharmaceutical drug discovery.