Fast, sensitive and portable NMR methods for characterizing porous structures, fluid dynamics and molecular exchange phenomena in biomaterials

This study focuses on developing and applying one- and two-dimension Laplace NMR (LNMR) methods for biomaterials research. LNMR experiments are especially useful for biomaterials characterization because they are non-invasive, non-destructive, and give multiscale information about the pore sizes in the range of nanometers to millimeters. Especially, the thesis concentrates on determining pore sizes, fluid dynamics and molecular exchange phenomena in biomaterials. Two-dimensional Laplace NMR experiments are accelerated by spatial encoding, enabling single-scan measurements. The method is called ultrafast LNMR. It reduces the experiment time by one to three orders of magnitude. Furthermore, the single-scan approach significantly facilitates the use of nuclear spin hyperpolarization techniques to boost the sensitivity of experiments by several orders of magnitude.