CPMG to Enhance Sharp Lines
The Carr - Purcell - Meiboom - Gill (CPMG) sequence is used to measure T2 relaxation times and more recently has made an impact in
measuring the line shapes of very broad solid lines by breaking them up into spikelet patterns which mimic the static line shape. The very simple pulse sequence is shown here:
During the (D2 -
? -D2)
n period the intensity of lines with short T2 (broad lines) diminishes much more quickly than that for lines with long T2 (sharp lines). The CPMG sequence is therefore useful for enhancing the sharp features in a spectrum by suppressing the broad features. This is demonstrated in the figure below. The top panel of the figure shows a portion of a conventional 500 MHz 1H NMR spectrum of a polymer sample contaminated with small amounts of smaller molecules. The broad lines (truncated in the figure) are due to the polymer whereas the much smaller sharp lines are due to the impurities. The bottom panel of the figure shows the CPMG spectrum of the same sample with D2 = 4 msec and
n = 32. One can see that the broad polymer lines are greatly suppressed and the smaller sharp lines are much more obvious.
Source:
University of Ottawa NMR Facility Blog