129Xenon NMR: Review of recent insights into porous materials

This paper presents a comprehensive review of the recent advances in xenon-129 nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements. In the past thirty years, 129Xe NMR has proved to be an efficient technique to investigate the structure of porous solids and several extensive reviews on the subject are available in the literature. The main advantage of 129Xe NMR is the high sensitivity of the xenon atom to its local environment. Using optical pumping techniques for the production of hyperpolarized (HP) xenon has led to an increase in sensitivity of several orders of magnitude. This development has opened the way to explore the internal structure and the porosity of a wide range of new advanced materials. This review which covers the period, 2005 up to now, starts with a description of the basic theory of xenon-NMR. It presents a basic overview of thermally and hyperpolarized xenon NMR technique followed by the recent NMR developments on various classes of porous materials. [Display omitted] •Introduction to 129Xe NMR of thermally and hyperpolarized xenon.•Comprehensive review of the recent advances in 129Xe NMR.•Reviewing previous work on probing structure interconnectivity of porous materials.