Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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SYMR: Symposium Nuclear Magnetic Resonance: from Applications in Condensed-Matter Physics to New Frontiers

SYMR 5: Nuclear Magnetic Resonance: Frontiers and Applications

SYMR 5.3: Talk

Tuesday, March 23, 2010, 14:15–14:30, H48

Exploring the limits to spatially resolved NMR — Achim Gädke^1,2 and •Nikolaus Nestle^1,3 — ¹TU Darmstadt, Institute of condensed matter physics, Germany — ²Present adress: Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand — ³Present adress: BASF SE, GKC/R, Ludwigshafen, Germany

Recent advances in MRI have demonstrated resolutions down to 1 μm. Magnetic resonance force microscopy has the potential to reach sensitivity for single nuclear spins. Given these numbers, in vivo imaging of single cells or even biomacromolecules may seem possible. However, for in vivo applications, there are fundamental differences in the contrast mechanisms compared to MRI at macroscopic scales as the length scale of of molecular self-diffusion exceeds that of the spatial resolution on the NMR time scale. Those effects - which are fundamentally different from the echo attenuation in field gradient NMR - even may lead to general limitations on the spatial resolution achievable in aqueous systems with high water content. In our contribution, we explore those effects on a model system in a high-resolution stray-field imaging setup. In addition to experimental results, simulations based on the Bloch-Torrey equation will be presented.