Electron-nuclear double resonance experimental techniques

Double-resonance spectroscopy involves the use of two different sources of radiation. In the context of EPR, these usually are a microwave and a radiowave or (less common) a microwave and another microwave. The two combinations were originally called ENDOR (electron nuclear double resonance) and ELDOR (electron electron double resonance), but the development of many variations on this theme has led to a wide spectrum of derived techniques and associated acronyms, such as ESEEM (electron spin echo envelope modulation), which is a pulsed variant of ENDOR, or DEER (double electron electron spin resonance), which is a pulsed variant of ELDOR. The basic principle involves the saturation (partially or wholly) of an EPR absorption and the subsequent transfer of spin energy to a different absorption by means of the second radiation, leading to the detection of the difference signal. The requirement of saturability implies operation at close to liquid helium, or even lower, temperatures, which, combined with long experimentation times, produces a... 

Since the phenoxyls possess an S = ground state, they have been carefully studied by electron paramagnetic spectroscopy (EPR) and related techniques such as electron nuclear double resonance (ENDOR), and electron spin-echo envelope modulation (ESEEM). These powerful and very sensitive techniques are ideally suited to study the occurrence of tyrosyl radicals in a protein matrix (1, 27-30). Careful analysis of the experimental data (hyperfine coupling constants) provides experimental spin densities at a high level of precision and, in addition, the positions of these tyrosyls relative to other neighboring groups in the protein matrix. 

To resolve hf and nuclear quadrupole interactions which are not accessible in the EPR spectra, George Feher introduced in 1956 a double resonance technique, in which the spin system is simultaneously irradiated by a microwave (MW) and a radio frequency (rf) field3. This electron nuclear double resonance (ENDOR) spectroscopy has widely been applied in physics, chemistry and biology during the last 25 years. Several monographs2,4 and review articles7 11 dealing with experimental and theoretical aspects of ENDOR have been published. 

ENDOR (Electron Nuclear Double Resonance) involves the simultaneous application of a microwave and a radio frequency signal to the sample. This is a technique invented by Feher in 1956. The original studies were on phosphorous-doped silicon. A description of the experimental results and apparatus used is presented in two Physical Review articles [24, 25], An excellent treatment of EPR double resonance techniques and theory is given in the book by Kevan and Kispert [26], What follows here is the theory and application of ENDOR used the in analysis of single crystal data with the goal of identifying free radical products in DNA constituents. 

Nonetheless, participation of some other impurity is not excluded. Further theoretical studies in combination with other experimental techniques such as EPR, electron-nuclear double resonance (ENDOR), etc., are needed to establish microscopic structure of the H-I defect. 

There are many experimental techniques for the determination of the Spin-Hamiltonian parameters g, Ux, J. D, E. Often applied are Electron Paramagnetic or Spin Resonance (EPR, ESR), Electron Nuclear Double Resonance (ENDOR) or Triple Resonance, Electron-Electron Double Resonance (ELDOR), Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), occasionally utilizing effects of Chemically Induced Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (CIDNP), Optical Detections of Magnetic Resonance (ODMR) or Microwave Optical Double Resonance (MODR), Laser Magnetic Resonance (LMR), Atomic Beam Spectroscopy, and Muon Spin Rotation (/iSR). The extraction of data from the spectra varies with the methods, the system studied and the physical state of the sample (gas, liquid, unordered or ordered solid). For these procedures the reader is referred to the monographs (D). Further, effective magnetic moments of free radicals are often obtained from static... 

Later [38, 39], oxygen vacancies (Fig. 2.2) and E point defects present in glassy Si02 could be studied in great detail, including also full ab-initio calculations of the hyperfine parameters experimentally detected by electron-nuclear double resonance (ENDOR) experiments. Indeed, these types of measurements are nowadays routinely done to identify this class of paramagnetic defects. In the ENDOR technique, some Si atoms are substituted with their isotopes Si. This confers anon-zero nuclear spin I to the atomic nucleus that couples to the electron spin S via a tensor A. On the theoretical front, the calculation from first principles DFT approaches does not pose particular problems since the hyperfine interaction is still a ground state property which can be expressed in terms of the electronic density p x). The interaction between an electron spin (S) and a nuclear (I) spin is in fact described by the Hamiltonian... 

Infrared, Raman, microwave, and double resonance techniques turn out to offer nicely complementary tools, which usually can and have to be complemented by quantum chemical calculations. In both experiment and theory, progress over the last 10 years has been enormous. The relationship between theory and experiment is symbiotic, as the elementary systems represent benchmarks for rigorous quantum treatments of clear-cut observables. Even the simplest cases such as methanol dimer still present challenges, which can only be met by high-level electron correlation and nuclear motion approaches in many dimensions. On the experimental side, infrared spectroscopy is most powerful for the O—H stretching dynamics, whereas double resonance techniques offer selectivity and Raman scattering profits from other selection rules. A few challenges for accurate theoretical treatments in this field are listed in Table I. 

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