Ultrafast Laplace NMR to study metal–ligand interactions in reversible polarisation transfer from parahydrogen

Laplace Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) can determine relaxation parameters and diffusion constants, giving valuable information about molecular structure and dynamics. Information about relaxation times (T(1) and T(2)) and the self-diffusion coefficient (D) can be extracted from exponentially decaying NMR signals by performing a Laplace transform, which is a different approach to traditional NMR involving Fourier transform of a free induction decay. Ultrafast Laplace NMR uses spatial encoding to collect the entire data set in just a single scan which provides orders of magnitude time savings. In this work we use ultrafast Laplace NMR D–T(2) correlation sequences to measure key relaxation (T(2)) and diffusion (D) parameters of methanolic solutions containing pyridine. For the first time we combine this technique with the hyperpolarisation technique Signal Amplification By Reversible Exchange (SABRE), which employs an iridium catalyst to reversibly transfer polarisation from parahydrogen, to boost the (1)H NMR signals of pyridine by up to 300-fold. We demonstrate use of ultrafast Laplace NMR to monitor changes in pyridine T(2) and D associated with ligation to the iridium SABRE catalyst and kinetic isotope exchange reactions. The combined 1440-fold reduction in experiment time and 300-fold (1)H NMR signal enhancement allow the determination of pyridine D coefficients and T(2) values at 25 mM concentrations in just 3 seconds using SABRE hyperpolarised ultrafast Laplace NMR.