Investigations of metal–organic frameworks are presented. This substance class is of interest for applications in gas storage (hydrogen, methane), separation, catalysis, and sensor technology. The properties of the material depend on the mobility of alkyl or alkyloxy side chains. We have determined that the side-chain methylene groups move highly anisotropically with a relatively short correlation time. Furthermore, we could improve the analysis procedure for the experiment used here.

Deuterium metabolic imaging (DMI) is a novel method to obtain images of dynamic metabolism in the living human brain. While DMI is generally simple and robust, small signals from deuterated skull lipids can distort the metabolic information within the brain. Here, we use MRI-based information on brain and skull locations to remove lipid signals from DMI data. With an average 90 % lipid removal, DMI is used to generate distinct and artifact-free metabolic maps on patients with brain tumors.

Protons (¹H) are useful reporters of protein structure and dynamics in solid-state NMR. However, ¹H abundance is detrimental to the resolution of NMR spectra. Substituting ¹H by deuterons has been an efficient strategy to improve spectral quality, but when the crucial backbone amide sites are not protonated, much information is loss. We propose a method to completely protonate the amide sites, while maintaining high-resolution information, which partially also extends to backbone alpha-¹H.

We have written a programming library for biological NMR, a commonly used research method. Its use simplifies (makes faster and less error-prone) development of new research methods. We demonstrate that it allows for consolidation of several experimental methods into one file without adding complexity. We hope that it will be of use for other groups developing NMR experiments.

Drug discovery requires the testing of a large number of samples to identify molecules with a potential therapeutic potential. The recent development of methods to perform such tests within seconds using sample illumination in a magnetic field could increase the throughput of such studies. We present a setup that integrates light into fully automated and commercially available instrumentation. This platform upgrade can increase the drug discovery throughput by a factor of 20 to 50-fold.

To characterize the amplitude of dynamic processes in molecules, anisotropic parameters can be measured using solid-state NMR. However, the timescales of motion that lead to such a scaling of the anisotropic interactions are not clear. Using numerical simulations in small spin systems, we could show that mostly the magnitude of the anisotropic interaction determines the range of timescales detected by the scaled anisotropic interaction, and experimental parameters play a very minor role.

In our study, we correlate the first- and the second-harmonic detection modes of continuous-wave electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) to identify traces of non-dendritic Li metal present on the graphite anode after multiple electrochemical cycles. Such metallic complexes are a source of limitations which reduce battery life and lead to serious safety issues. To improve their detection, we propose to simultaneously record the first- and second-harmonic EPR spectra.