STTR Phase I: Probe for High Field Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP) at Room Temperature

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (SSTR) project is the development of a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) probe that will enable research in the field of protein structure determination for dug development and analytical chemistry. The goal is to improve the signal-to-noise ratio in measurements taken at room temperature by a factor of 200 using a technique called Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP). This increase in signal-to-noise ratio will reduce the experiment time by a factor of 40,000, and will enable the study of sensitive phenomena not possible with current NMR methods. Current DNP instrumentation and methods require operation at cryogenic temperatures in the range of -180 degrees C, which requires expensive cryogenic systems, and limits the NMR characterization of biologically important proteins that have important dynamics around room temperature (0-20 degrees C). A novel NMR probe will be developed that will enable researchers to achieve the same increase in NMR signal strength at room temperature by improving the delivery of terahertz power to the NMR sample. The NMR probe and methods to achieve the benefits of DNP at room temperature will reduce the cost of cryogenic infrastructure necessary for current DNP setups. This STTR Phase I project proposes to develop an NMR probe head that uses a novel rotor-resonator integrated with an electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) cavity to increase sensitivity by a factor of 200 at room temperature using DNP. The rotor resonator will increase the EPR/microwave field intensity by a factor of 10 compared to currently available DNP instrumentation. The proposed DNP-NMR probe will enable DNP at room temperature with the following advantages to currently employed cryogenic DNP methods: a) Molecular dynamics (motion) can be determined experimentally; b) molecular structure will not be altered by cryogenic conditions; and c) the spectral resolution will be improved (sharper NMR lines).