Correlation of the Isotropic NMR Chemical Shift with Oxygen Coordination Distances in Periodic Solids

Abstract

In Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, the isotropic chemical shift δiso is a measure of the electron density around the observed nuclide. For characterization of solid materials and compounds, it is desirable to find correlations between δiso and structural parameters such as coordination numbers and distances to neighboring atoms. Correlations of good quality are easier to find when the coordination sphere is formed by only one element, as the electron density is obviously strongly dependent on the atomic number. The current study is therefore restricted to nuclides in pure oxygen coordination. It is shown that the isotropic shift δiso correlates well with the average oxygen distances (as defined by the coordination sphere) for the nuclides 23Na (with spin I=3/2), 27Al (I=5/2), and 43Ca (I=7/2), using literature data for a range of periodic solids. It has been previously suggested for 207Pb (I=1/2) that δiso may alternatively be related to the shortest oxygen distance in the structure, and our study corroborates this also for the nuclides considered here. While the correlation with the minimal distance is not always better, it has the advantage of being uniquely defined. In contrast, the average distance is strongly dependent on the designation of the oxygen coordination sphere, which may be contentious in some crystal structures.