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Nuclear magnetic resonance without large and expensive equipment?

Nuclear magnetic resonance without large and expensive equipment?

Modern nuclear magnetic resonance instruments allow for non-invasive observation of the inside of our bodies or a structural analysis of chemical compounds, but using them can sometimes prove to be quite troublesome. Fortunately, JU scientists are working to make things easier.

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a technique best known for its medical application: magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). It can be used for many other purposes (besides medical diagnostics, it’s also employed in natural resources and food industry). However, to successfully utilise NMR to perform any task, it’s necessary to generate a sufficiently strong magnetic field first. Impressively, it has to be hundreds of thousands times stronger that of the Earth, meaning it’s not always safe. This restricts the number of cases in which NMR can be used – for instance, it prevents doctors from using it on patients with pacemakers. Another obstacle is that generating such a strong magnetic field requires large, complex, and expensive superconducting magnets. The field also needs to be highly homogenous. All of this makes NMR instruments very costly to maintain and difficult to move around. The few mobile NMR labs that exist in the world are formidable juggernauts designed to carry specialist equipment.

Overcoming obstacles

A team of JU scientists from the Department of Photonics led by Dr hab. Szymon Pustelny is currently working on new NMR techniques. They collaborate with similar teams from the University of Cambridge, University of Turin, and Ulm University.

‘We’re trying to find a whole new way to look at NMR’, Dr hab. Pustelny said. The researchers will take their measurements in a very weak magnetic field or even without one (‘zero-field nuclear magnetic resonance’). To measure minute signals emitted by the tested sample, the researchers are going to use one of the most sensitive sensors – optic magnetometers. But they’re going to have to resolve several issues. One of them is the polarisation of the tested object, i.e. magnetising the sample so that it can be studied using NMR. This can be solved by putting the sample inside a magnetic field, much the same as in a conventional NMR experiments. However, contrary to the conventional techniques, the field can be created by small, cheap neodymium magnets (with a magnetic field up to 2T. T, or tesla, is a unit of magnetic induction. For comparison, Earth’s magnetic field is about 100,000 times weaker). ‘We'll focus on different physical principles (e.g. scalar feedback). In this way, our zero-field NMR will provide us with information on the molecules structure and the strength and orientation of chemical bonds without the need for expensive superconducting magnets’, Dr hab. Pustelny explained.

Conducting research in such conditions also eliminates one of the most serious problems of traditional NMR, related to the magnetic field’s non-homogeneity. Heterogeneous magnetic fields are characterised by different level of magnetic induction in different points. For instance, in the case of neodymium magnets, the field changes dramatically even over the span of as little as a few dozen centimetres. When researching chemical compounds, the field needs to be homogenous to discriminate between substances that are marginally different from one another. In a heterogeneous one, the readings performed by the NMR will overlap and it will be difficult to say what exactly is studied.

‘Our research may allow for designing smaller mobile NMR laboratories or making them easier to install in medical facilities’.

The technique introduced by the JU team offers extreme precision when detecting changes in the structure of molecules and influence of external factors (like variations in viscosity or temperature). It opens up new paths in chemical analysis. ‘What’s more, since the signature of each molecule is unique, we plan to create a database of zero-field spectres that in the future will allow us to recognise certain chemical substances. In particular, we’d like to develop the techniques of detecting liquid explosives, which is not possible via standard NMR’, Dr hab. Pustelny added.

Great mysteries of science

The crucial aspect of the team’s research is their work on low-cost medical imaging. ‘Our research may allow for designing smaller mobile NMR laboratories or making them easier to install in medical facilities’, Dr hab. Pustelny said.

The scientists plan to use the new methods of NMR to search for physical phenomena which so far are only predicted to exist within some models in the area of physics called ‘exotic physics’, such as dark matter. ‘It can bring us closer to unravelling the greatest mysteries of modern science, like dark matter and dark energy, or why there is more matter than antimatter in the Universe’, Dr hab. Pustelny summed up.

Original text: www.nauka.uj.edu.pl

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