Compact Superconducting High-Field Magnets for NMR Applications

To increase the signal-to-noise ratio in NMR spectroscopy, strong magnetic fields are necessary along with high temporal and spatial homogeneity down to ppb levels for high resolution and sufficient chemical shift range. Currently, low temperature superconductors are used to produce very high magnetic fields but there are still challenges of compactness and portability, which our project aims to solve. Here, we will discuss on how we plan to reduce the size of the magnets by using high-temperature superconducting materials while keeping the magnetic field significantly high, at around 10 T, and sufficiently homogeneous to overcome the limitations of current bench-top NMR spectrometers that are restricted to 3 T and have lower polarisation and chemical shift. We will discuss on the various challenges we face starting from the conceptualisation, the materials, the magnet design, cryogenics, and the solutions that we have in mind including future prospect of in-house production and manufacturing, to achieve our vision of a portable, mobile high-field NMR spectrometer, that is cryogen- free and has greater accessibility.