Polarization enhanced “single shot” N14 nuclear quadrupole resonance detection of trinitrotoluene at room temperature

Abstract

The authors show that a combination of proton-nitrogen level crossing polarization transfer with a pulsed spin-locking sequence makes N14 nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) fast and sensitive enough to be used in routine explosive detection as well as in the pharmaceutical industry for nondestructive chemical analysis of solid samples and polymorph determination. As an example we present “single shot” measurements of the N14 NQR spectra of 15g of trinitrotoluene at room temperature with a total measuring time of 20s.