Detecting Doubly Labeled Singlet States with Natural Abundance Samples
Kevin Claytor
Hyperpolarization has recently been shown to help overcome the inherently poor sensitivity of in vivo NMR spectroscopy. However, the practicality of in vivo hyperpolarization studies is greatly limited by T1 relaxation. This lifetime can be extended by more than ten times T1 by storing the hyperpolarized signal in a singlet state between chemically equivalent spins. Unfortunately, the theoretical understanding and nature of these long-lived singlet states is still limited, and synthesis of the labeled compounds is costly. Using a high-field and cold probe, we demonstrate a pulse-sequence technique that is potentially capable of studying the 13C2 singlet state lifetime using an unlabeled compound. This facilitates the exploration of many target molecules to find singlet states that sustain long-lived hyperpolarization.
