Micro-NMR System
Overview
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) is widely used in
medical diagnostics and chemical analysis. Due to rapid growing of the NMR
applications, the conventional NMR systems may not fulfill the need of all
applications. For example, in some applications of chemical or biological
analysis, such as microspectroscopy and NMR-detected microseparation, the test
samples are very small—typical volume is around or below a microliter. The
microliter-volume sample brings up a challenge in NMR system design because the
signal-to-noise ratio in an NMR system is linearly dependent on the volume of
the sample. It is necessary to develop a micro-NMR device that can exploit a
volume-limited sample very efficiently as the existing NMR devices are usually
designed for larger samples where the SNR is not the major design constraint.
We also hope the development of a highly integrated micro-NMR device could
further expand the application realm of NMR because conventional NMR equipment,
including desktop NMR equipment, are relatively large and their applications
are limited because of the size.
Publication
·
Wen-Chieh Lin and Gary Fedder, A
Comparison of Induction-Detection NMR and Force-Detection NMR on Micro-NMR Device
Design, Technical Report, CMU-RI-TR-01-06, Carnegie Mellon University,
2001.
Links
·
Kevin Frederick implemented a Force-Detection
NMR Sensor based on the analysis of this report.
·
The
basics of NMR by J. P. Honak at RIT.
·
Magnetic
Resonace Engineering Laboratory at UIUC.
·
Microsystems Design Group
at EPFL.