An experimental method is described allowing fast field-cycling Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) experiments over a wide range of magnetic fields from 5 nT to 10 T. The method makes use of a hybrid technique: the high field range is covered by positioning the sample in the inhomogeneous stray field of the NMR spectrometer magnet. For fields below 2 mT a magnetic shield is mounted on top of the spectrometer; inside the shield the magnetic field is controlled by a specially designed coil system. This combination allows us to measure T₁-relaxation times and nuclear Overhauser effect parameters over the full range in a routine way. For coupled proton-carbon spin systems relaxation with a common T₁ is found at low fields, where the spins are “strongly coupled”. In some cases, experiments at ultralow fields provide access to heteronuclear long-lived spin states. Efficient coherent polarization transfer is seen for proton-carbon spin systems at ultralow fields as follows from the observation of quantum oscillations in the polarization evolution. Applications to analysis and the manipulation of heteronuclear spin systems are discussed.

Previous transient absorption measurements using the magnetically affected reaction yield (MARY) technique for a series of rigidly linked electron donor/electron acceptor dyads (D-X-A) consisting of a triarylamine donor, a naphthalene diimide acceptor, and a meta-conjugated diethynylbenzene unit as a bridge had revealed the presence of electronic exchange interaction, J, in the photoexcited charge separated (CS) state. Here, we present results obtained by photochemically induced dynamic nuclear polarization (photo-CIDNP) that allows for determining the sign of J. By variation of the magnetic field from 1 mT to 9.4 T, pronounced absorptive maxima of CIDNP were detected for more than 20 ¹H nuclei disregarding the sign of their hyperfine coupling constants in the transient charge separated state, with positions of maxima close to those found by the MARY technique. Quantitative comparison of the observed CIDNP signals for various D-X-A dyads reveals an increase in the CIDNP enhancement factor with increasing population of the triplet state determined by MARY spectroscopy at zero magnetic field. For CIDNP of the methyl groups of the TAA donor dyads, we found in all studies a good linear dependence between the CIDNP signal amplitude and the initial population of the CS triplet state. The linear relationship together with the absorptive CIDNP allows us to conclude that (i) the sign of the electronic exchange interaction J_ex is positive, (ii) CIDNP is formed predominantly in the vicinity of level anticrossing between the T₊ and S electronic levels, and (iii) coherent triplet-singlet transitions are induced by hyperfine interaction and accompanied by simultaneous electron and nuclear spin flip, $\left|T_{+}\beta \right.⟩\to \left|S\alpha \right.⟩$ .

Recently, human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSc) have attracted a great deal of attention as potential therapeutic agents in the treatment of socially significant diseases. Despite substantial advances in stem-cell therapy, the biological mechanisms of hMSc action after transplantation remain unclear. The use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as a non-invasive method for tracking stem cells in the body is very important for analysing their distribution in tissues and organs, as well as for ensuring control of their lifetime after injection. Herein, detailed experimental data are reported on the biocompatibility towards hMSc of heavily gadolinium-doped cerium oxide nanoparticles (Ce_0.8Gd_0.2O_2−x) synthesised using two synthetic protocols. The relaxivity of the nanoparticles was measured in a magnetic field range from 1 mT to 16.4 T. The relaxivity values (r₁ = 11 ± 1.2 mM⁻¹ s⁻¹ and r₁ = 7 ± 1.2 mM⁻¹ s⁻¹ in magnetic fields typical of 1.5 and 3 T MRI scanners, respectively) are considerably higher than those of the commercial Omniscan MRI contrast agent. The low toxicity of gadolinium-doped ceria nanoparticles to hMSc enables their use as an effective theranostic tool with improved MRI-contrasting properties.

Flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) is an important cofactor in many light-sensitive enzymes. The role of the adenine moiety of FAD in light-induced electron transfer was obscured, because it involves an adenine radical, which is short-lived with a weak chromophore. However, an intramolecular electron transfer from adenine to flavin was revealed several years ago by Robert Kaptein by using chemically induced dynamic nuclear polarization (CIDNP). The question of whether one or two types of biradicals of FAD in aqueous solution are formed stays unresolved so far. In the present work, we revisited the CIDNP study of FAD using a robust mechanical sample shuttling setup covering a wide magnetic field range with sample illumination by a light-emitting diode. Also, a cost efficient fast field cycling apparatus with high spectral resolution detection up to 16.4 T for nuclear magnetic relaxation dispersion studies was built based on a 700 MHz NMR spectrometer. Site-specific proton relaxation dispersion data for FAD show a strong restriction of the relative motion of its isoalloxazine and adenine rings with coincident correlation times for adenine, flavin, and their ribityl phosphate linker. This finding is consistent with the assumption that the molecular structure of FAD is rigid and compact. The structure with close proximity of the isoalloxazine and purine moieties is favorable for reversible light-induced intramolecular electron transfer from adenine to triplet excited flavin with formation of a transient spin-correlated triplet biradical F^⚫−-A^⚫+. Spin-selective recombination of the biradical leads to the formation of CIDNP with a common emissive maximum at 4.0 mT detected for adenine and flavin protons. Careful correction of the CIDNP data for relaxation losses during sample shuttling shows that only a single maximum of CIDNP is formed in the magnetic field range from 0.1 mT to 9 T; thus, only one type of FAD biradical is detectable. Modeling of the CIDNP field dependence provides good agreement with the experimental data for a normal distance distribution between the two radical centers around 0.89 nm and an effective electron exchange interaction of −2.0 mT.

The field of zero- to ultralow-field (ZULF) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is currently experiencing rapid growth, owing to progress in optical magnetometry and attractive features of ZULF-NMR such as low hardware cost and excellent spectral resolution achieved under ZULF conditions. In this work, an approach is proposed and demonstrated for simultaneous acquisition of ZULF-NMR spectra of individual ¹³C-containing isotopomers of chemical compounds in a complex mixture. The method makes use of fast field cycling such that the spin evolution takes place under ZULF conditions, whereas signal detection is performed in a high-field NMR spectrometer. This method has excellent sensitivity, also allowing easy assignment of ZULF-NMR spectra to specific analytes in the mixture. We demonstrate that the spectral information is the same as that given by ZULF-NMR, which makes the method suitable for creating a library of ZULF-NMR spectra of various compounds and their isotopomers. The results of the field-cycling experiments can be presented in a convenient way as 2D-NMR spectra with the direct dimension giving the high-field ¹³C-NMR spectrum (carrying the chemical-shift information) and the indirect dimension giving the ZULF-NMR spectrum (containing information about proton–carbon J-couplings). Hence, the method can be seen as a variant of heteronuclear J-resolved spectroscopy, one of the first 2D-NMR techniques.