In Situ SABRE Hyperpolarization with Earth’s Field NMR Detection

Abstract

Hyperpolarization methods, which increase the sensitivity of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), have the potential to expand the range of applications of these powerful analytical techniques and to enable the use of smaller and cheaper devices. The signal amplification by reversible exchange (SABRE) method is of particular interest because it is relatively low-cost, straight-forward to implement, produces high-levels of renewable signal enhancement, and can be interfaced with low-cost and portable NMR detectors. In this work, we demonstrate an in situ approach to SABRE hyperpolarization that can be achieved using a simple, commercially-available Earth’s field NMR detector to provide 1H polarization levels of up to 3.3%. This corresponds to a signal enhancement over the Earth’s magnetic field by a factor of ε > 2 × 108. The key benefit of our approach is that it can be used to directly probe the polarization transfer process at the heart of the SABRE technique. In particular, we demonstrate the use of in situ hyperpolarization to observe the activation of the SABRE catalyst, the build-up of signal in the polarization transfer field (PTF), the dependence of the hyperpolarization level on the strength of the PTF, and the rate of decay of the hyperpolarization in the ultra-low-field regime.