Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

High-resolution NMR spectra of samples with anisotropic broadening are simplified to their isotropic spectra by fast rotation of the sample at the magic angle 54.7 circ. This dissertation concerns the development of novel Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) methodologies based which would rotate the magnetic field instead of the sample, rotating field NMR. It provides an over of the NMR concepts, procedures, and experiments needed to understand the methodologies that will be used for rotating field NMR. A simple two-dimensional shimming method based on harmonic corrector rings which can provide arbitrary multiple order shimming corrections were developed for rotating field systems, but could be used in shimming other systems as well. Those results demonstrate, for example, that quadrupolar order shimming improves the linewidth by up to an order of magnitude. An additional order of magnitude reduction is in principle achievable by utilizing this shimming method for z-gradient correction and higher order xy gradients. A specialized pulse sequence for the rotating field NMR experiment is under development. The pulse sequence allows for spinning away from the magic angle and spinning slower than the anisotropic broadening. This pulse sequence is a combination of the projected magic angle spinning (p-MAS) and magic angle turning (MAT) pulse sequences. This will be useful to rotating field NMR because there are limits on how fast a field can be spun and spin at the magic angle is difficult. One of the goals of this project is for rotating field NMR to be used on biological systems. The p-MAS pulse sequence was successfully tested on bovine tissue samples which suggests that it will be a viable methodology to use in a rotating field set up. A side experiment on steering magnetic particle by MRI gradients was also carried out. Some movement was seen in these experiment, but for total control over steering further experiments would need to be done.