Double-selective inversion experiments

Aspects of the experimental implementation of the technique have been studied in detail [41] and it has been shown that double sideband modulation and pulse shaping can be combined to improve the performance of selective pulses in solid state 2H NMR. Applications of the selective inversion-recovery experiment using a DANTE sequence to study ultraslow motions have been demonstrated [42,43]. 

The SELINCOR experiment is a selective ID inverse heteronuclear shift-correlation experiment i.e., ID H,C-COSYinverse experiment) (Berger, 1989). The last C pulse of the HMQC experiment is in this case substituted by a selective 90° Gaussian pulse. Thus the soft pulse is used for coherence transfer and not for excitation at the beginning of the sequence, as is usual for other pulse sequences. The BIRD pulse and the A-i delay are optimized to suppress protons bound to nuclei As is adjusted to correspond to the direct H,C couplings. The soft pulse at the end of the pulse sequence (Fig. 7.8) serves to transfer the heteronuclear double-quantum coherence into the antiphase magnetization of the protons attached to the selectively excited C nuclei. 

Rotational-echo double-resonance (REDOR)(75,79) is a new solid-state NMR technique which is sensitive to through-space carbon-nitrogen interactions between selectively 13C and 15N-enriched sites separated by up to 5A (20-22). The parameter directly measured in a REDOR experiment is the heteronuclear dipolar coupling constant DCN, which is in itself proportional to the inverse third power of the intemuclear distance, rCN. It is this dependence on (icn)3 which accounts both for REDOR s ability to accurately measure short distances and its insensitivity to longer-range interactions. As a technique which can probe, in detail, intermolecular interactions over a distance range of 5A, REDOR is well suited to studying the distribution of small selectively-labeled molecules in polymer delivery systems. 

It has been mentioned in Section 7.3, and it was implicit all over Chapter 7, that a finite time is required to achieve selective saturation or inversion of a signal by a soft pulse, during which time polarization starts to be exchanged, causing non-linearity of the response (see also Section 9.3). It should be stressed that this is not the case in all common 2D experiments based on non-selective pulses, which have durations of the order of microseconds instead of milliseconds, as required for selectivity. Selectivity in 2D experiments is intrinsic because of the double frequency labeling along f and /2. 

An interesting development in molecular rotational relaxation has been the microwave double-resonance method176-178. The technique permits the exploration of the fine detail of the processes which occur in collisions of polyatomic molecules, and results for a number of symmetric tops have been reported. For example, Oka has described experiments on NH3 in which inversion doublets for selected J values were pumped by high microwave power. Pumping disturbs the population of the inversion doublet, and also that of other doublets which are populated from the original pair by collision processes. By absorption measurements of other inversion doublets with steady state irradiation, Oka has shown that in NH3/NH3 collisions, transitions which are allowed by the electric dipole selection rules (A/ = 0, 1, + - —) are preferred. Oka s analysis indicates that relaxation is most favourable in collision with molecules having similar J values, which are termed rotational resonances (R-R transfer). For example the process... 

The experiment described above is termed selective population transfer (SPT), or more precisely in this case with proton spin inversion, selective population inversion, (SPI). It is important to note, however, that the complete inversion of spin populations is not a requirement for the SPT effect to manifest itself. Any unequal perturbation of the lines within a multiplet will suffice, so, for example, saturation of one proton line would also have altered the intensities of the carbon resonance. In heteronuclear polarisation (population) transfer experiments, it is the heterospin-coupled satellites of the parent proton resonance that must be subject to the perturbation to induce SPT. The effect is not restricted to heteronuclear systems and can appear in proton spectra when homonuclear-coupled multiplets are subject to unsymmetrical saturation. Fig. 4.20 illustrates the effect of selectively but unevenly saturating a double doublet and shows the resulting intensity distortions in the multiplet structure of its coupled partner, which are most apparent in a difference spectrum. Despite these distortions, the integrated intensity of the proton multiplet is unaffected by the presence of the SPT because of the equal positive and negative contributions (see Fig. 4.19d). Distortions of this sort have particular relevance to the NOE difference experiment described in Chapter 8. 

Figure 10. Parts of 2D trNOESY (a), 2D trROESY (b), and 2D QUIET-trNOESY (c) of a-Kdo-(2- 4)-a-Kdo-(2- 0)-allyl bound to mAb S25-2. The QUIET-trNOESY experiment was recorded with a 15 ms double-band selective Q3 inversion pulse (inversion of regions 4.10-3.60 ppm and 2.17-1.67 ppm). Peaks within the inverted regions show an opposite sign (bold lines, c) relative to the other cross peaks outside these regions. The mixing time was 250 ms for all experiments. A comparison of the spectra allows identification of spin-difiiision effects. Cross-peaks that are cancelled in the trROESY spectrum because spin diffusion and direct dipolar interactions take place at the same time (see discussion in the text) are marked with circles in the 2D trROESY spectrum (b). Reprinted with permission from Biochemistry [39).

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