Within applications of relaxometry, protein applications require the most high resolution and sensitivity. Due to the value range of relaxation parameters of biomolecular systems, in addition to the demand for high resolution, a rapid field switch is essential.
Recently, high-field static NMR becomes insufficient for biological system studies. Protein dynamics investigation requires field-dependent term in relaxation rate to extract the parameters in molecular motions. To understand the spectra density function of protein dynamics, field-dependent longitudinal relaxation becomes an essential study in many biological systems.
In addition to protein dynamics investigation, relaxivity measurement on contrast agents is also a hot topic in NMR relaxometry studies. Relaxivity measurement is also a field-dependent relaxation measurement but observing on the solvent side. Its important application as contrast agents in MRI. The agents perturb the relaxation mechanism in water to increase the imaging contrast in the region of interest.
Our field-cycler has been utilized in such studies and opened a comparable magnetic field range of relaxivity measurement as current MRI scanners.
In the field of soil chemistry and environmental chemistry, field-cycling NMR relaxometry has not yet been a well-recognized approach. Hence, Prof. Conte has shared two of his works to introduce the capability of field-cycling NMR in applications of soil chemistry and environmental chemistry. For scientists who are interested in environmental science, relaxometry can explore more and open different windows of molecular dynamics in soil chemistry.
Dynamics of polymers have been investigated by NMR field-cycling relaxometry for decades. The field-dependent relaxation (relaxomtry, or so called dispersion NMR, “NMRD”) allows researchers to have a detailed description of the amplitude and characteristic time of molecular motions.