Development of Earth’s Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (EFNMR) Technique for Applications in Security Scanning Devices

• Published in: Applied magnetic resonance Vol. 47; no. 1; pp. 87 - 99
• Main Authors: Balcı, Erdem, Rameev, Bulat, Acar, Hakkı, Mozzhukhin, Georgy V., Aktaş, Bekir, Çolak, Bektaş, Kupriyanov, Pavel A., Ievlev, Alexander V., Chernyshev, Yury S., Chizhik, Vladimir I.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Vienna Springer Vienna 01-01-2016; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Aluminum; Atoms and Molecules in Strong Fields; Consoles; Copper; Coupling; Experiments; Fluorine; Gradiometers; Laboratories; Laser Matter Interaction; Liquids; Magnetic fields; Magnetic measurement; Magnetic resonance imaging; NMR; Nuclear magnetic resonance; Organic Chemistry; Physical Chemistry; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Power supply; Proton resonance; Radio frequency; Radio frequency shielding; Security; Software; Solid State Physics; Spectral resolution; Spectroscopy/Spectrometry; Transistors; Good Spectral Resolution; Free Induction Decay Signal; Fluorobenzene; Trimethyl Phosphate; White Spirit
• ISSN: 0937-9347; 1613-7507
• DOI: 10.1007/s00723-015-0730-z

In this work Earth’s field nuclear magnetic resonance (EFNMR) technique for applications in security scanning devices has been presented. The EFNMR setup has been build based on
Magritek
low-frequency (0–1 MHz)
KEA
-
2
NMR console. Excepting the NMR console, all components are home-made units, which are a first-order gradiometer RF probe, pre-polarization system, magnetic field shimming system, RF shielding box and passive filters. Our measurements have shown that even in very noisy lab conditions the EFNMR signals of small amounts (~5 ml) of liquid samples could be measured. EFNMR measurements of various liquids have been performed and their spin–lattice
T
1
and spin–spin
T
2
relaxation constants have been obtained. A possibility to detect, at the same time, both fluorine and proton resonance has been shown by EFNMR measurements of trifluoroacetic acid. A good spectral resolution of EFNMR setup has been demonstrated by the spectroscopic measurements of heteronuclear J-coupling of trimethyl phosphate and fluorobenzene. Furthermore, we have shown that the EFNMR measurements of
T
1
and
T
2
constants as well as heteronuclear J-coupling of liquids enclosed in metallic containers are feasible. Possible applications of the EFNMR technique in security scanners for the detection of illicit and energetic substances are discussed.