Pulsed Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
at Hobart and William Smith Colleges dept. of Physics
Fall 2019
This experiment is a much more bare-bones, fundamental version of the nuclear magnetic resonance spectra taken in my organic chemistry work. This technique uses non-invasive magnetic pulses in order to investigate properties unique to different samples containing spin 1/2 nuclei (1H, 13C, etc). This same technique is also the basis behind medical magnetic resonance imaging.
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Here, a pulsed radio frequency magnetic field and a static magnetic field was applied to two different samples in pulses of tuned lengths and of resonant frequency with the sample.
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By varying the time between two pulses of tuned length, the resulting magnetization of the sample was then measured. From differently timed pulses, the characteristic properties of spin-spin relaxation time and spin-lattice relaxation time can be found.
A plot showing the net magnetization in the xy plane (CH1, yellow) and the applied radio-frequency pulses (CH4, green). Time between these pulses are varied in order to measure the spin-lattice relaxation time.