Pure Shift NMR

Incorporating BIRD-based homodecoupling in the dual-optimized, inverted 1JCC 1,n-ADEQUATE experiment

1,n‐ADEQUATE is a powerful NMR technique for elucidating the structure of proton‐deficient small molecules that can help establish the carbon skeleton of a given molecule by providing long‐range three‐bond ¹³C─¹³C correlations. Care must be taken when using the experiment to identify the simultaneous presence of one‐bond ¹³C─¹³C correlations that are not filtered out, unlike the HMBC experiment that has a low‐pass J‐filter to filter ¹J_CH responses out. Dual‐optimized, inverted ¹J_CC 1,n‐ADEQUATE is an improved variant of the experiment that affords broadband inversion of direct responses, obviating the need to take additional steps to identify these correlations. Even though ADEQUATE experiments can now be acquired in a reasonable amount of experimental time if a cryogenic probe is available, low sensitivity is still the main impediment limiting the application of this elegant experiment. Here, we wish to report a further refinement that incorporates real‐time bilinear rotation decoupling‐based homodecoupling methodology into the dual‐optimized, inverted ¹J_CC 1,n‐ADEQUATE pulse sequence. Improved sensitivity and resolution are achieved by collapsing homonuclear proton–proton couplings from the observed multiplets for most spin systems. The application of the method is illustrated with several model compounds.

Homodecoupled 1,1- and 1,n-ADEQUATE: Pivotal NMR Experiments for the Structure Revision of Cryptospirolepine

Cryptospirolepine is the most structurally complex alkaloid discovered and characterized thus far from any Cryptolepis specie. Characterization of several degradants of the original, sealed NMR sample a decade after the initial report called the validity of the originally proposed structure in question. We now report the development of improved, homodecoupled variants of the 1,1- and 1,n-ADEQUATE (HD-ADEQUATE) NMR experiments; utilization of these techniques was critical to successfully resolving long-standing structural questions associated with crytospirolepine.

Disentangling complex mixtures of compounds having near-identical 1H and 13C NMR spectra by pure shift NMR

The thorough analysis of highly complex NMR spectra using pure shift NMR experiments is described. The enhanced spectral resolution obtained from modern 2D HOBS experiments incorporating spectral aliasing in the ¹³C indirect dimension enables the distinction of similar compounds exhibiting near‐identical ¹H and ¹³C NMR spectra. It is shown that a complete set of extremely small Δδ(¹H) and Δδ(¹³C) values, even below the natural line width (1 and 5 ppb, respectively), can be simultaneously determined and assigned.

Measurement of T1/T2 relaxation times in overlapped regions from homodecoupled 1H singlet signals

The implementation of the HOmodecoupled Band-Selective (HOBS) technique in the conventional Inversion- Recovery and CPMG-based PROJECT experiments is described. The achievement of fully homodecoupled signals allows the distinction of overlapped 1H resonances with small chemical shift differences. It is shown that the corresponding T1 and T2 relaxation times can be individually measured from the resulting singlet lines using conventional exponential curve-fitting methods.

Implementing homo- and heterodecoupling in region-selective HSQMBC experiments

An NMR method to enhance the sensitivity and resolution in band-selective long-range heteronuclear correlation spectra is proposed. The excellent in-phase nature of the selHSQMBC experiment allows that homonuclear and/or heteronuclear decoupling can be achieved in the detected dimension of a 2D multiple- bond correlation map, obtaining simplified cross-peaks without their characteristic fine J multiplet structure. It is shown that the 1H-homodecoupled band-selective (HOBS) HSQMBC experiment represents a new way to measure heteronuclear coupling constants from the simplified in-phase doublets generated along the detected dimension.