Probing the Surface of Oxide Nanoparticles Using DNP-Enhanced High-Resolution NMR of Quadrupolar Nuclei

The surfaces of nanomaterials with applications in optoelectronics and catalysis control their physicochemical properties. NMR spectroscopy, enhanced by dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP), is a powerful approach to probe the local environment of spin-1/2 nuclei near surfaces. However, this technique often lacks robustness and resolution for half-integer quadrupolar nuclei, which represent more than 66% of the NMR-active isotopes. A novel pulse sequence is introduced here to circumvent these issues. This method is applied to observe with high-resolution ²⁷Al and ¹⁷O spin-5/2 nuclei on the surface of γ-alumina. Moreover, we report high-resolution ¹⁷O spectra of ZnO nanoparticles used in optoelectronics. Their assignment using DFT calculations allows the first NMR observation of vacancies near the surfaces. Finally, we employ the introduced NMR technique to observe ¹¹B spin-3/2 nuclei on the surface of partially oxidized boron nitride supported on silica and to distinguish its different BO₂OH active sites.