A Millimeter-wave Tunable Cavity for Ultra-sensitive Solids and Liquids DNP-NMR at Low Budget

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): NMR is probably the most powerful and widely used analytical technique for structure determination and function elucidation of molecules of all types, but it suffers from low sensitivity, particularly for insoluble biological macromolecules. Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP) with Magic Angle Spinning (MAS) has recently demonstrated S/N gains exceeding two orders of magnitude at ~100 K compared to conventional MAS-NMR in many biological solids. Despite this enormous benefit to biomedical research, the adaptation rate of DNP will be severely limited by its very high price tag (currently 1.8-4M), mostly because of the special magnet (with sweep coils) and expensive gyrotron required, owing to the very poor microwave efficiency of current DNP probes. Our detailed simulations of a novel millimeter wave (mmw) DNP cavity have shown the potential for achieving the needed electron spin saturation with two orders of magnitude lower microwave power than the existing MAS-DNP