Videos
Long-loved nuclear singlet spin order and its applications
During the 84th session of the Global NMR Discussion Meetings held on April 30th, 2024 via Zoom, Prof. Giuseppe Pileio from the University of Southampton, UK gave a talk on the topic "Long-loved nuclear singlet spin order and its applications". The recording serves as a tutorial.
Abstract: Nuclear singlet spin order is the population difference between the singlet and triplet states in a system of two coupled spin-1/2 nuclei. This form of order is long-lived, silent and accessible on demand. For almost two decades, my research activities were focused at exploiting these three main properties of nuclear spin order to develop new applications in NMR and MRI. In this talk, I will introduce the concept and the main features of singlet order as well as the tools developed for its manipulations. I will then show how we are using this form of order to enhance several NMR and MRI techniques for the long-term storage of hyperpolarisation, to obtain a new form of contrast in MRI, for the measurements of slow diffusion and flow, or for the determination of structural features of porous media such as tortuosity and structural anisotropy through singlet-assisted diffusion NMR.
Prof. Pileio's research: https://generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk/gpgroup/
Explorations in NMR Relaxation
During the 72nd session of the Global NMR Discussion Meetings held on October 10th, 2023 via Zoom, Prof. Alexej Jerschow gave a talk on the topic "Explorations in NMR Relaxation by Experiments and MD/Ab Initio Computation". The recording serves as a tutorial.
Prof. Alexej Jerschow is a Professor of Chemistry at New York University, USA.
Website: https://wp.nyu.edu/jerschow/
Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?...
X (previously Twitter): https://twitter.com/ajerschow
Long-lived states: some unexpected applications
During the 42nd session of the Global NMR Discussion Meetings held on February 8th, 2022 via Zoom, Prof. Geoffrey Bodenhausen gave a talk on the topic "Long-lived states: some unexpected applications". The recording serves as a tutorial.
Abstract: The invention of singlet states, also known as long-lived states (LLS), by Malcolm Levitt was to be followed by many further inventions by scores of creative co-workers in Southampton and Novosibirsk: the quest for molecules immersed in environments capable of supporting singlet states with very long lifetimes, magnetization-to-singlet conversion (M2S), extremely low frequency (ELF) excitation, classification of decay rates according to the eigenvalues of the Liouvillian, effects of exchange on the lifetimes of LLS, etc. Our laboratories at EPFL and ENS have focused on a few applications of long-lived states, such as the study of slow diffusion of macromolecules, long-lived states in substrates of enzymatic reactions, long-lived states in systems with many spins, long-lived population imbalances in systems containing quadrupolar nuclei, elusive long-lived states in water (“para-water”), and long-lived states in drug molecules binding to macromolecular targets.
Speaker's biography:
1996-present: Professor, Department of Chemistry, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris
2001-2016: Professor, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
1985-2001: Université de Lausanne
1994-1996: National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and Florida State University, Tallahassee
1980-1985: Post-doc at ETH with Richard Ernst
1977 :D. Phil. Oxford with Ray Freeman Corresponding member of the Netherlands Academy of Sciences (KNAW), Fellow of the American Physical Society, Latsis Prize of the Swiss National Science Foundation
Follow Prof. Bodenhausen's work here:
Google scholar: https://scholar.google.fr/citations?u...
The Art of Long-Lived Nuclear Spin Order: Methods and Applications
In session 31 held on 20th July 2021, Dr. Mohamed Sabba gave a talk on "The Art of Long-Lived Nuclear Spin Order: Methods and Applications", via Zoom. The video was recorded live during the presentation and serves as an educative lecture.
Bio:
BSc at University of Greenwich with Prof. Jeremy Everett 2014-2017
PhD at University of Southampton with Prof. Malcolm Levitt 2017-2021
Postdoc with Prof. Malcolm Levitt 2021-
Follow Dr. Sabba:
Twitter: @ma_sabba
Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/...
Abstract:
All physical systems are bound by entropy. In particular, nuclear spin order undergoes relaxation through several distinct modes. The cases of the relaxation of longitudinal and transverse order, characterized by the familiar time constants T1 and T2, are textbook examples in the field of liquid-state NMR which are routinely probed and fairly well-studied. For many years it was popularly believed that T1 was the ultimate upper bound on experimentally accessible relaxation times.
However, in coupled spin systems, it is possible to access a range of interesting configurations which had been almost completely overlooked in the formative decades of magnetic resonance. These configurations have often been organized under the loose umbrella term "long-lived nuclear spin order" owing to their exceptional lifetimes. The most prominent of these is nuclear singlet order which our group in 2004 demonstrated could be accessed easily in 2-spin-1/2 systems from ordinary room-temperature magnetization via simple pulse sequences. Since then the field has grown rapidly with insightful contributions from several excellent groups. There have been striking discoveries, such as room-temperature solution-state lifetimes beyond 1 hour in certain spin systems, which is orders of magnitude larger than T1 in the same conditions.
This talk will be an attempt at summarizing the basic theory and practice of generating, preserving, and reading out long-lived spin order in 2-spin-1/2 systems, with a pragmatic focus tailored towards the experimental spectroscopists curious in these techniques, as well as chemists interested in probing the dynamical properties of their molecules through the potentially unique and symmetry-sensitive relaxometry of long-lived order. We hope to portray this subfield of NMR as readily available rather than exotic and inscrutable. We discuss seminal experiments of the field and also present some of our recent experimental results on robust, highly efficient pulse sequences for accessing 2-spin-1/2 long-lived order in a wide range of chemical inequivalence regimes.