Local-field approximation of homonuclear dipolar interactions in ⁷Li-NMR: density-matrix calculations and random-walk simulations tested by echo experiments on borate glasses

Anion dynamics and motional decoupling in a glycerol-choline chloride deep eutectic solvent studied by one- and two-dimensional 35Cl NMR

Chlorine-35 is among the few nuclides that provide an experimental handle on the anion dynamics in choline based deep eutectic solvents. By combining several nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques, the present work examines the Cl- motions within glyceline, a glycerol : choline chloride 2 : 1 solution, in a large temperature range down to the glass transition temperature Tg. The applied methods include spin relaxometry, second-order line shape analysis, as well as two-dimensional central-transition exchange and stimulated-echo spectroscopy. The finding of unstructured central-transition NMR spectra characterized by a relatively small average quadrupolar coupling attests to a highly disordered, essentially nondirectional anionic coordination in glyceline. For temperatures larger than about 1.3Tg the chlorine motions are well coupled to those of the glycerol and the choline moieties. At lower temperatures the local translational anion dynamics become Arrhenian and increasingly faster than the motion of glyceline's matrix molecules. Upon further cooling, the overall ionic conductivity continues to display a super-Arrhenius behavior, implying that the choline cations rather than the Cl anions dominate the long-range charge transport also near Tg.

Paddle-wheel mechanism in doped succinonitrile-glutaronitrile plastic electrolyte: a joint magnetic resonance, dielectric, and viscosimetry study of Li ion translational and molecular reorientational dynamics

Mixtures of 60% SN (succinonitrile) and 40% GN (glutaronitrile) doped with LiTFSI or LiPF₆ at different concentrations are investigated using dielectric spectroscopy. Room temperature conductivities up to 10^-3 S cm^-1 are measured along with an overall conductivity enhancement of almost five decades compared to pure SN. Additionally, the dynamics of the methylene (CD₂) groups of SN and that of the Li⁺ ions within the mixture are studied in a wide temperature range using ²H and ⁷Li NMR relaxometry, respectively. Static-field-gradient proton NMR combined with viscosity measurements probe the molecular diffusion. GN addition and Li doping both enhance the electrical conductivity significantly, while leaving the reorientational motion within the matrix essentially unchanged. The times scales and thus the effective energy barriers characterizing the Li ion motion as well as the molecular reorientations are very similar in the liquid and in the plastic phases, findings that argue in favor of the presence of a paddle-wheel mechanism.

Independent component analysis combined with Laplace inversion of spectrally resolved spin-alignment echo/T 1 3D 7Li NMR of superionic Li10GeP2S12

The use of independent component analysis (ICA) for the analysis of two-dimensional (2D) spin-alignment echo–T 1 7Li NMR correlation data with transient echo detection as a third dimension is demonstrated for the superionic conductor Li10GeP2S12 (LGPS). ICA was combined with Laplace inversion, or discrete inverse Laplace transform (ILT), to obtain spectrally resolved 2D correlation maps. Robust results were obtained with the spectra as well as the vectorized correlation maps as independent components. It was also shown that the order of ICA and ILT steps can be swapped. While performing the ILT step before ICA provided better contrast, a substantial data compression can be achieved if ICA is executed first. Thereby the overall computation time could be reduced by one to two orders of magnitude, since the number of computationally expensive ILT steps is limited to the number of retained independent components. For LGPS, it was demonstrated that physically meaningful independent components and mixing matrices are obtained, which could be correlated with previously investigated material properties yet provided a clearer, better separation of features in the data. LGPS from two different batches was investigated, which showed substantial differences in their spectral and relaxation behavior. While in both cases this could be attributed to ionic mobility, the presented analysis may also clear the way for a more in-depth theoretical analysis based on numerical simulations. The presented method appears to be particularly suitable for samples with at least partially resolved static quadrupolar spectra, such as alkali metal ions in superionic conductors. The good stability of the ICA analysis makes this a prospect algorithm for preprocessing of data for a subsequent automatized analysis using machine learning concepts.

Four-time 7Li stimulated-echo spectroscopy for the study of dynamic heterogeneities: Application to lithium borate glass

To study the nature of the nonexponential ionic hopping in solids a pulse sequence was developed that yields four-time stimulated-echo functions of previously inaccessible spin-3/2-nuclei such as ⁷Li. It exploits combined Zeeman and octupolar order as longitudinal carrier state. Higher-order correlation functions were successfully generated for natural-abundance and isotopically-enriched lithium diborate glasses. Four-time ⁷Li measurements are presented and compared with two-time correlation functions. The results are discussed with reference to approaches devised to quantify the degree of nonexponentiality in glass forming systems and evidence for the occurrence of dynamic heterogeneities and dynamic exchange were found. Additional experiments using the ⁶Li species illustrate the challenge posed by subensemble selection when the dipolar interactions are not very much smaller than the quadrupolar ones.

Submillimeter coils for stimulated-echo spectroscopy of a solid sodium ion conductor by nonselective excitation of MHz broad 23Na quadrupolar satellite spectra

In solids the detection of ionic motion covering the time range of milliseconds and longer is often accomplished using stimulated-echo spectroscopy. For spectral line widths much below or much above 1MHz nonselective or fully selective radio-frequency pulse excitation, respectively, is typically applied in such experiments. To enable the study of samples with quadrupolarly broadened satellite spectra featuring intermediate widths (in the lower MHz range) the present work exploits microcoils. Using such coils, stimulated-echo spectroscopy can be performed under conditions of nonselective excitation for instance with ²³Na as a nuclear probe. Nutation experiments carried out used to assess the coil performance. The impact of second-order quadrupolar interactions is studied using explicit density-matrix calculations. The applicability of the present approach is successfully tested for a sodium orthophosphate based solid ion conductor.

Quadrupolar transients, cosine correlation functions, and two-dimensional exchange spectra of non-selectively excited spin-3/2 nuclei: A (7)Li NMR study of the superionic conductor lithium indium phosphate

Cos-cos stimulated echoes of non-selectively excited spin-3/2 nuclei were not exploited in studies of slow motional processes in solids and solid-like samples, so far. Based on a theoretical analysis of the quadrupolar transients which hitherto obviously precluded the application of such echoes, their utility is demonstrated for the example of (7)Li NMR on the polycrystalline fast ion conductor lithium indium phosphate. Quadrupolar transients can adversely affect the shape of two- and three-pulse echo spectra and strategies are successfully tested that mitigate their impact. Furthermore, by means of suitably adapted cos-cos echo sequences an effective suppression of central-line contributions to the NMR spectra is achieved. By combining cos-cos and sin-sin datasets static two-dimensional exchange spectra were recorded that display quadrupolarly modulated off-diagonal intensity indicative of ionic motion.