Rotational tunneling of methyl groups in the hydroquinone/acetonitrile clathrate: A combined deuteron NMR, INS, and computational study

Quantum rotor induced hyperpolarization

Despite its broad applicability NMR has always been limited by its inherently low sensitivity. Hyperpolarization methods have the potential to overcome this limitation and, in the case of ex situ dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP), large enhancement factors have been achieved. Although many other polarization methods have been described in the past, including chemically and parahydrogen-induced polarization and optical pumping, DNP has recently been the most popular. Here we present an additional polarization mechanism arising from quantum rotor effects in methyl groups, which generates polarizations at temperatures < 1.5 K and interferes with DNP at such temperatures. The polarization generated by this mechanism is efficiently transferred via carbon bound protons. Although quantum rotor polarizations have been studied for a small range of molecules in great detail, we observe such effects for a much broader range of substances with very different polarization rates at temperatures < 1.5 K. Moreover, we report transfer of quantum rotor polarization across a chain of protons. The observed effect not only influences the polarization in low-temperature DNP experiments but also opens a new independent avenue to generate enhanced sensitivity for NMR.

Methyl rotational tunneling dynamics of p-xylene confined in a crystalline zeolite host

The methyl rotational tunneling spectrum of p-xylene confined in nanoporous zeolite crystals has been measured by inelastic neutron scattering (INS) and proton nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and analyzed to extract the rotational potential energy surfaces characteristic of the methyl groups in the host-guest complex. The number and relative intensities of the tunneling peaks observed by INS indicate the presence of methyl-methyl coupling interactions in addition to the methyl-zeolite interactions. The INS tunneling spectra from the crystals (space group P2(1)2(1)2(1) with four crystallographically inequivalent methyl rotors) are quantitatively interpreted as a combination of transitions involving two coupled methyl rotors as well as a transition involving single-particle tunneling of a third inequivalent rotor, in a manner consistent with the observed tunneling energies and relative intensities. Together, the crystal structure and the absence of additional peaks in the INS spectra suggest that the tunneling of the fourth inequivalent rotor is strongly hindered and inaccessible to INS measurements. This is verified by proton NMR measurements of the spin-lattice relaxation time which reveal the tunneling characteristics of the fourth inequivalent rotor.

The shape and information content of high-field solid-state proton NMR spectra of methyl groups

The possible variation of the lineshape of the high-field 1H spectrum of methyl groups is explored by simulation and experiment. The spectrum of an isolated methyl group depends, apart from the orientation of the applied field B0 relative to the C3-axis of the group, on its rotational tunnel frequency vt and on its stochastic reorientation rate k. For quantitative analyses, the directional mobility of the C3-axis must also be taken into account. A distinct but frequently occurring case arises when the methyl groups come as pairs of magnetically equivalent close neighbours. For the experiments, single crystals of four compounds I-IV were grown that were isotopically substituted such that they contained protons only in the methyl positions. The crystal symmetry of all compounds I-IV allowed us to record spectra with all methyl groups being orientationally and otherwise equivalent. I, acetonitrile in deuterated hydroquinone, represents the case of a well-isolated methyl group with a "high" tunnel frequency vt. Its spectrum is (almost) independent of the temperature T. In II, monomethyl malonic acid, vt is comparable in size with the strength of the intramolecular dipolar H-H interaction. All seven theoretically expected lines in the 1H spectrum are clearly resolved in the spectra of II. vt can be inferred with an uncertainty of only +/- 300 Hz. vt(T) is found to possess a (flat) maximum near 40 K. Compound III, L-alanine, allows the study of the case of a methyl group with an extremely low, although nonzero tunnel frequency (vt approximately 3 kHz) while IV, dimethylglyoxime, represents the case of a close pair of equivalent methyl groups. Its spectrum reflects intriguing structural implications.

Iterative lineshape analysis of quadrupolar echo spectra of a damped CD(3) quantum rotor: preliminary evidence of a novel mechanism of stochastic spin exchange

It is demonstrated that the wealth of information about damped quantum rotation of CD(3) groups, contained in quadrupolar echo spectra, can be fully explored in a broad temperature range using a method of iterative analysis of the spectral lineshapes. The recently reported lineshape equation which, apart from the quantum tunneling and the dissipative Alexander--Binsch terms, contains an additional dissipative term having no classical analog is shown to be capable of describing even subtle details of the spectra of a crystal of acetylsalicylic acid--CD(3) oriented specifically in the magnetic field. Preliminary evidence of the occurrence of this novel dissipative mechanism in the system studied is reported. The results obtained seem to suggest that there is no "classical limit" in the dissipative behavior of this system.

Quantitative atom-atom potentials from rotational tunneling: their extraction and their use

Rotational tunneling of small molecular groups has been the subject of considerable theoretical and experimental activity for several decades. Much of this activity has been driven by the promise of exploiting the extreme sensitivity of quantum tunneling to interatomic potentials, but until recently, there was no straightforward means by which quantitative information about these potentials could be extracted. This review explains how a quantitative method, suitable for general application, was developed. It then goes on to show how this has been used to understand tunneling systems for which no previous satisfactory explanation had been found. The application of the methodology, and its results, to other disciplines is discussed.