NMR at Low Temperatures
{'Code': '03090004', 'Directorate': {'LongName': 'Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien'}, 'Division': {'LongName': 'Division Of Chemistry'}}
{'SignBlockName': 'Francis J. Wodarczyk'}
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is uniquely                       important to almost every modern scientific discipline.  It                     provides definitive structural data for simple molecules as                     well as complex biologically important systems.  Unlike other                   spectroscopies, however, NMR suffers from conspicuously low                     sensitivity--partly because of the low energy of the                            (radiofrequency) photons involved, but more importantly from                    the small polarizations of nuclear spin systems.  The Boltzmann                 factor appropriate to typical magnetic moments in a laboratory                  Zeeman field at room temperature leads to a fractional excess                   population in the absorbing state on the order of 0.0001 to                     0.00001.                                                                                                                                                        The history of NMR is replete with technical advances which                     attack this problem by increasing the applied magnetic field,                   but the current state of the physics and engineering underlying                 magnet design offer little hope for any further large                           improvements in the near future.  It is the goal of the                         research in Professor Waugh's laboratory to obtain significant                  improvements (10,000 to 100,000) in signal by lowering the                      temperature.  The gains to be made are potentially remarkable:                  at high temperatures the polarization and hence the voltage                     sensitivity grow directly as 1/T, suggesting potentially                        unlimited gains through arbitrarily close approaches to T=O.                    This is a high risk research program as it is technically very                  difficult to operate NMR equipment in the millikelvin range.                    However, the payoff to all NMR justifies the effort.
{'FirstName': 'John', 'LastName': 'Waugh', 'EmailAddress': None, 'StartDate': '07/05/1994', 'EndDate': None, 'RoleCode': 'Principal Investigator'}
{'Name': 'Massachusetts Institute of Technology', 'CityName': 'Cambridge', 'ZipCode': '021394301', 'PhoneNumber': '6172531000', 'StreetAddress': '77 MASSACHUSETTS AVE', 'CountryName': 'United States', 'StateName': 'Massachusetts', 'StateCode': 'MA'}
{'Code': '1960', 'Text': 'STRUCTURE AND REACTIVITY'}
{'url': 'https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/download?DownloadFileName=1987&All=true', 'xml': '8711907.xml'}