Magic-angle hopping as an alternative to magic-angle spinning for solid state NMR

A new variation is presented on the recently reported two-dimensional magic-angle hopping technique. In this new experiment, the frequency domain that provides chemical-shift anisotropy information has been “sacrificed” in favor of improved sensitivity in the isotropic chemical-shift spectrum. This is accomplished by repeatedly refocusing the initial magnetization in the t 2 (data acquisition) domain and measuring the resulting string of echoes. Although the sensitivity is still inferior to that of a standard magic-angle spinning (MAS) experiment, it far surpasses that achieved in the original 2-D approach, and may render the hopping approach an attractive alternative to MAS in some kinds of applications.