Use of a water flip-back pulse in the homonuclear NOESY experiment

A simple modification to the WATERGATE water suppression scheme [Piotto, M., Saudek, V. and Sklenář, V. (1992) J. Biomol. NMR, 2, 661-665] is proposed. Radiation damping is used as an active element during the mixing time of a NOESY experiment, in order to obtain a reproducable state of the water magnetization at the end of the mixing time. Through the use of a water flip-back pulse and a gradient-tailored excitation scheme, we obtain both an excellent water suppression and a water magnetization close to equilibrium at the beginning of the acquisition time. We show experimentally that this modification results in a 20% gain in intensity for all signals when using a relaxation delay of 1.5 s, and also that avoiding a semisaturated state for the water magnetization allows the amide protons as well as other proton resonances to relax to equilibrium with their proper relaxation time.