Broadband MAS NMR

People working with me on this project at CRMN: T. Robinson (PhD student), J. Koppe (post-doc), A. Lesage (IRHC CNRS), A. J. Pell (Pr ENS Lyon).

Collaborators: C. Copéret (ETH Zurich, CH).

Certain materials and molecular solids present significant challenges for solid-state NMR due to extremely broad NMR lines. These broadened lines, with static spectra spanning tens of kHz, can result from strong electron-nucleus interactions in paramagnetic systems, large chemical shift anisotropies (CSA) in certain transition metals, or intense quadrupolar couplings in nuclei with spins greater than 1/2. Such broad signals reduce both sensitivity and resolution, limiting the effective study of these systems with standard NMR techniques.
Our lab focuses on developing advanced NMR techniques to overcome these obstacles. We employ amplitude- and phase-modulated radio-frequency pulses that widen the excitation and inversion bandwidths, working effectively under both static and ultra-fast MAS conditions. Additionally, we implement frequency-stepped methods and custom polarization transfer schemes to improve the manipulation and detection of broad-line nuclei, pushing the frontiers of NMR spectroscopy for challenging systems.

See: Kervern et al. Chem. Phys. Lett., 2007, 435, 157; Deschamps et al. J. Chem. Phys., 2008, 119, 204110; Pell et al. J. Chem. Phys. 2013, 138, 114201; Pell et al. Progr. Nucl. Magn. Reson. Spectrosc., 2015, 84-85, 33; Pell et al. J. Chem. Phys. 2017, 146; Sander et al Chem. Phys. Lett., 2018, 697, 29.