Nearly 106-fold enhancements in intermolecular 1H double-quantum NMR experiments by nuclear hyperpolarization

Intermolecular Multiple-Quantum Coherences (iMQCs) can yield interesting NMR information of high potential usefulness in spectroscopy and imaging - provided their associated sensitivity limitations can be overcome. A recent study demonstrated that ex situ dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) could assist in overcoming sensitivity problems for iMQC-based experiments on 13C nuclei. In the present work we show that a similar approach is possible when targeting the protons of a hyperpolarized solvent. It was found that although the DNP procedure enhances single-quantum 1H signals by about 600, which is significantly less than in optimized low-γ liquid-state counterparts, the non-linear dependence of iMQC-derived signals on polarization can yield very large enhancements approaching 106. Cleary no practical amount of data averaging can match this kind of sensitivity gains. The fact that DNP endows iMQC-based 1H NMR spectra with a sensitivity that amply exceeds that of their thermally polarized single-quantum counterpart, is confirmed in a number of simple single-scan 2D imaging experiments.