The circuit (
Figure 2a) employs 120–240 VAC power mains as a source of alternating current. Three thermistors (9 Ω each) are placed in parallel to boost the current carrying capacity of the circuit during the charging phase. When the switch is activated, the “charging” phase is initiated. During this phase, the current increases causing the thermistors to warm up, thus resulting in an increase of their resistance by ~4–5 orders of magnitude. As a result, in a few hundred milliseconds, the current begins to decay adiabatically due to increasing resistance of the thermistors. The current decay is completed in less than 2 seconds,
i.e. the thermistors ensure the mains power is no longer supplied after this relatively short period of time. In practice, we employed a push-button switch, which is un-pressed after approximately 1 second. A diode is added in series with resistors to ensure the flow of power from the mains to the degaussing inductor is unidirectional. The diode output is connected to capacitor (470 μF) and degaussing inductor, see
Figure 2. In practice, we have successfully tested a wide range of degaussing inductors made in house (40.4 mH) and also supplied by the vendor for the following shields ZG-203 (4.8 mH), ZG-206 (18.1 mH), ZG-209 (105.8 mH), Magnetic Shield Corp., Bensenville, IL USA. We have also added a LED indicator to inform the user that the circuit was truly energized (light ON) and that the process was completed (dimming light). An ~0.7 kΩ resistor is added in series to protect the LED and to also modulate the decay rate of the electromagnetic field in the LC circuit. The complete list of part numbers, manufacturers’, vendors’ information, and technical drawings can be found in
Supporting Information (SI). The cost of construction was $73 – note that some components were purchased in bulk.
15N SABRE-SHEATH experiments were performed as described previously.
[43 –45 (link)] Briefly, Ir-IMes pre-catalyst
[46 (link)] and [
15N
3]metronidazole were dissolved in CD
3OD. The prepared 0.6 mL solution contained approximately 2 mM pre-catalyst and 40 mM [
15N
3]metronidazole. The solution was placed in an economy 5 mm NMR tube jacketed with 0.25 in. (~6.35 mm) OD Teflon extension. The solution was then purged with ultra-high purity argon gas for approximately 2 minutes before connecting it to our p-H
2 bubbling setup via Teflon extension described in
Figure 3 and
Figure S1. Once the tube was connected to the manifold, the catalyst was activated for approximately 1 h using 20 standard cubic centimetres per minute (sccm) flow rate of p-H
2 (~98%
[47 (link)]) at 100 PSI (~690 kPa) overpressure. After catalyst activation, the formation of the polarization transfer complex (PTC) allows for efficient polarization transfer of nuclear spin polarization from p-H
2-derived hydrides to
15N nuclei in [
15N
3]metronidazole. The details of spin-relayed polarization transfer to all three
15N sites are thoroughly reviewed elsewhere.
[43 –45 (link)] For SABRE-SHEATH hyperpolarization, we have employed 70 sccm flow rate for p-H2 bubbling and ZG-203 shield equipped with degaussing solenoid coil. The coil was connected to the degaussing circuit shown in
Figure 2, and degaussing was performed using 120 VAC mains. The degaussing circuit was then disconnected and the RF solenoid coil was connected to 5 VDC power supply and current attenuation resistor bank. A residual field of less than 20 nT was measured repeatedly by a three-axis fluxgate magnetometer (Bartington Instruments, Oxford, U.K.) with 10 nT resolution.
For
15N SABRE-SHEATH experiments, p-H
2 was bubbled in the shield at B
LAC (created by the RF solenoid inside the shield) for ~1 min at room temperature, 70 sccm and 100 PSI (690 kPa) overpressure. Next, p-H
2 flow was ceased via opening the bypass valve, and the sample was quickly transferred for
15N detection in 1.4 T bench-top NMR spectrometer (Nanalysis, Canada). The total delay from p-H
2 cessation to
15N NMR acquisition was less than 5 seconds.
15N signal enhancement and polarization levels were computed by employing external signal reference (12.4 M [
15N]pyridine,
Figure 4b) as described in detail previously.
[43 ]
Joalland B., Nantogma S., Chowdhury M.R., Nikolaou P, & Chekmenev E.Y. (2021). Magnetic Shielding of Parahydrogen Hyperpolarization Experiments for the Masses. Magnetic resonance in chemistry : MRC, 59(12), 1180-1186.