Using perdeuterated surfactant micelles to resolve mixture components in diffusion-ordered NMR spectroscopy

Diffusion-ordered NMR spectroscopy resolves mixture components on the basis of differences in their respective diffusion coefficients or molecular sizes. However, when components have near-identical diffusion coefficients, they are not resolved in the diffusion dimension of a diffusion-ordered spectroscopy (DOSY) spectrum. Adding surfactant micelles to these mixtures has been shown to enhance resolution when the component molecules interact differentially with the micelles. This approach is similar to that used in electrokinetic chromatography (EKC) where modifiers like micelles or polymers are used to enhance the separation of mixture components. In this study, perdeuterated surfactants are added to analyte mixtures studied with the DOSY technique. Since no micelle resonances appear in the mixture spectra, the difficulty associated with performing biexponential analyses in spectral regions where analyte and surfactant resonances overlap is avoided. The approach is demonstrated using mixtures of peptides with near-identical diffusion coefficients.