Enhanced sensitivity of electron-nuclear double resonance (ENDOR) by cross polarisation and relaxation

Abstract

Electron-nuclear double resonance (ENDOR) is a method of choice to detect magnetic nuclei in the coordination sphere of paramagnetic molecules, but its sensitivity substantially suffers from saturation effects. Recently we introduced a new pulsed ENDOR experiment based on electron-nuclear cross polarisation (CP) transfer. Here we analyse the time evolution of the spin polarization in CP-ENDOR and show that CP combined with inherent fast relaxation leads to enhanced sensitivity as compared to Davies ENDOR.