Chemically cross-linked polyacrylonitrile. A DMSO compatible NMR alignment medium for measurement of residual dipolar couplings and residual chemical shift anisotropies

[Display omitted] •Chemically cross-linked polyacrylonitrile (PAN) aligning media gels have been prepared.•Gels allow the measurement of RDCs and RCSAs using Gil's compression method.•Upon compression the gels present a deuterium splitting of more than 25 Hz.•The gels present a clean in background on the 1H-13C HSQC spectra. Chemically cross-linked polyacrylontrile polymer gels, have been prepared as an alignment medium compatible with DMSO-d6. These gels allow measurement of residual dipolar couplings (RDCs) and residual chemical shift anisotropies (RCSAs) with good accuracy as tested with brucine and α-santonin natural compounds. The gels can be reversibly compressed allowing easy measurement of RCSAs. They also present good physical homogeneity, clean HSQC spectra with little background 1H signals, and allow unambiguous referencing of 13C spectra for RCSA extraction.