Electron nuclear double resonance spectroscopy hyperfine coupling

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. 

Electron-nuclear double resonance (ENDOR) spectroscopy A magnetic resonance spectroscopic technique for the determination of hyperfine interactions between electrons and nuclear spins. There are two principal techniques. In continuous-wave ENDOR the intensity of an electron paramagnetic resonance signal, partially saturated with microwave power, is measured as radio frequency is applied. In pulsed ENDOR the radio frequency is applied as pulses and the EPR signal is detected as a spin-echo. In each case an enhancement of the EPR signal is observed when the radiofrequency is in resonance with the coupled nuclei. 

Deuterium quadrupole coupling constants can also be obtained from electron nuclear double resonance (ENDOR).19 30 An observation of the hyperfine structure caused by quadrupole coupling in the electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectrum, as for many lanthanide complexes, has not been reported for deuterium. The determination of nuclear quadrupole coupling constants from Mossbauer spectroscopy is not applicable to the deuterium nucleus. 

There are also pulse EPR methods that probe the chemical or rather magnetic environment. These are pulse electron nuclear double resonance (ENDOR) and hyperfine sublevel correlation (HYSCORE) spectroscopy, which allow measuring hyperfine couplings from the unpaired electron spin to surrounding magnetically active nuclei ([20] in Fig. 3 this is a P nucleus). As these experiments are performed in frozen solution (e.g., in all examples of this chapter) or in solids, from the anisotropy and orientation dependence of the hyperfine coupling one can obtain valuable information on the structure up to 1 nm. 

Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy [1-3] is the most selective, best resolved, and a highly sensitive spectroscopy for the characterization of species that contain unpaired electrons. After the first experiments by Zavoisky in 1944 [4] mainly continuous-wave (CW) techniques in the X-band frequency range (9-10 GHz) were developed and applied to organic free radicals, transition metal complexes, and rare earth ions. Many of these applications were related to reaction mechanisms and catalysis, as species with unpaired electrons are inherently unstable and thus reactive. This period culminated in the 1970s, when CW EPR had become a routine technique in these fields. The best resolution for the hyperfine couplings between the unaired electron and nuclei in the vicinity was obtained with CW electron nuclear double resonance (ENDOR) techniques [5]. 

Hyperfine splitting due to interaction with ligand nuclei with 7 > 0 reflects the extent of spin delocalization onto neighboring atoms and can be used to characterize the types and numbers of such nuclei. In cases where these couplings are too small to be resolved in the EPR spectra, electron nuclear double resonance (ENDOR) or electron spin echo envelope modulation (ESEEM) can be used to measure the couplings as discussed in Chapter 2.3. Modern calculational tools are approaching the capabilities required to calculate g and A values from electronic wave functions. However, much of the spectroscopy that has been performed to date has used empirical correlations to interpret g and A values. 

Not all the information can be obtained by the basic CW experiment that is considered by many chemists as all there is to EPR. Elucidating geometric structure or small spin densities requires the separation of small hyperfine couplings or dipole-dipole couplings between electron spins from larger interactions. This can be achieved by double resonance experiments, such as electron nuclear double resonance (ENDOR) [8,9] and electron electron double resonance (ELDOR) spectroscopy and further pulse-EPR techniques [10] such as electron spin echo envelope modulation (ESEEM). Pulse-EPR techniques may also provide more information on dynamic processes than simple CW experiments and may access longer time scales. 

ENDOR techniques work rather poorly if the hyperfine interaction and the nuclear Zeeman interaction are of the same order of magnitude. In this situation, electron and nuclear spin states are mixed and formally forbidden transitions, in which both the electron and nuclear spin flip, become partially allowed. Oscillations with the frequency of nuclear transitions then show up in simple electron spin echo experiments. Although such electron spin echo envelope modulation (ESEEM) experiments are not strictly double-resonance techniques, they are treated in this chapter (Section 5) because of their close relation and complementarity to ENDOR. The ESEEM experiments allow for extensive manipulations of the nuclear spins and thus for a more detailed separation of interactions. From the multitude of such experiments, we select here combination-peak ESEEM and hyperfine sublevel correlation spectroscopy (HYSCORE), which can separate the anisotropic dipole-dipole part of the hyperfine coupling from the isotropic Fermi contact interaction. 

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