DINAMIX

In order to describe, understand, and eventually control chemical reactions, scientists need to know what is happening in reaction mixtures.

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is the chemist’s most powerful tool to "see" which molecules are in a sample. However, the available options are typically a comprehensive picture on a completed reaction, and partial snapshots throughout the reaction. Using concepts derived from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and recent instrumentation, we are developing methods to provide a more complete picture of solution mixtures that evolve in time.

Chemical samples often come as solution mixtures. While advanced analytical methods exist for samples at equilibrium, the information on components and their interactions that may be accessed for out-of-equilibrium mixtures is much more limited. These include, for example, reaction mixtures in chemical synthesis and catalysis, as well as biochemical enzymatic reactions. The DINAMIX project aim at providing additional molecular-level information on out-of-equilibrium mixtures.

The project relies on diffusion nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, a powerful method that separates the spectra of mixtures’ components and identifies interactions, in correlation with structural insight provided by NMR observables. A spatial parallelisation is used to approach that makes it possible to acquire data in less than a second, instead of several minutes with conventional methods. This also has the potential to boost the power of hyperpolarisation methods such as dissolution dynamic nuclear polarisation (D-DNP) for mixtures analysis.

D-DNP indeed provides NMR sensitivity enhancements of up to 4 orders of magnitude, which however last only for a short time in solution. The methods developed will be used for applications in reaction monitoring in catalytic organic synthesis and biochemistry.

ERC DINAMIX – Real-time diffusion NMR analysis of mixtures

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Project team