An Investigation of the Sample Rotation Effects on Suppression of Convective Flows in PGSE Diffusion NMR Experiments

Undesirable convective flow in an NMR tube inhibits the accurate measurement of diffusion coefficients by NMR spectroscopy. To minimize the convection effects, various methods have been suggested, and it has been known that the use of sample rotation can be useful. However, it has not been clearly examined that the convection suppressing effect of the sample rotation under the different spinning speeds. In this study, the relation between convective flow and the sample rotation was investigated using PGSE NMR diffusion experiments to reveal the feasibility for controlling the convective flow in an NMR tube by sample rotation itself. The viscosity effect was also examined using solvents with four different viscosities, acetone-d6 chloroform-d, pyridine-d5, and D2O. The sample rotation showed apparent convection suppressing effects at all temperature range for the low viscosity solvents, acetone-d6 and chloroform-d, even at the faster than 5 Hz spinning rate. The similar patterns were also observed for pyridine-d5 and D2O, which have higher viscosity. This effect was observed even at high temperatures where convective flow arises conspicuously.