Dynamic nuclear polarization surface-enhanced NMR spectroscopy (DNP-SENS) is a powerful technique to analyze the atomic-level structure of the surface of inorganic nanomaterials. Nevertheless, these materials often contain quadrupolar nuclei, such as 17O, 27Al, 33S, 43Ca, 49Ti, 67Zn, etc. Recently, we have shown that through-space INEPT (D-RINEPT) using symmetry-based dipolar recoupling built from adiabatic pulses can efficiently transfer polarization from protons to quadrupolar nuclei, including those with low gyromagnetic ratio, such as 49Ti, 95Mo and 67Zn [1].
Here, we report recent development and applications of this NMR experiment to characterize nanomaterials. We notably observed 33S and 67Zn near the surface of ZnS nanoplatelets, which are promising quantum dots [2]. This study represents the first experimental demonstration of DNP-enhanced 33S NMR experiments. The DNP-enhanced broad 33S spectra were acquired in a piecewise manner using variable offset cumulative spectroscopy (VOCS) approach. DNP data were combined with ultra-high field NMR experiment and DFT calculation to understand the structure of ZnS nanoplatelets.
The DNP-enhanced D-RINEPT experiment was also applied to detect the NMR signals of enable 43Ca nuclei of calcium silicate hydrate (C-S-H) which is a primary constituent of cements. Furthermore, this polarization transfer was combined with homonuclear dipolar decoupling to acquire 2D 1H-43Ca heteronuclear correlation spectra, which allows the identification of Ca sites corresponding to Ca-O layers and Ca2+ ion.
We also improved the resolution of DNP-SENS NMR spectra of half-integer spin quadrupolar nuclei by combining D-RINEPT and MQMAS sequences. To maximize the efficiency, we developed D-RINEPT-split-t1-MQMAS-QCPMG sequence with FAMN or Coslp [3] excitation and reconversion pulses and limited number of phase cycle step. This novel technique has been applied to identify 27Al, 17O and 11B sites near the surface of γ-alumina, ZnO nanocrystals, (ZnO-ZrO2)/SiO2 catalysts and BN/SiO2 catalysts.
H.N. acknowledges JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists (JP20K15319) and JST, PRESTO Grant Number JPMJPR2276.