Optical Chopper for Longitudinal-Detected Electron Paramagnetic Resonance at 188 GHz/6.7 T

Dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) is a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) hyperpolarization technique that mediates polarization transfer from unpaired electrons to nuclear spins. DNP performance can vary significantly depending on the types of polarizing agents employed, and the criteria for optimum DNP efficiency are not fully understood. Thus, a better understanding of the structure, electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) line widths, and relaxation properties would aid in designing more efficient DNP polarizing agents. However, EPR characterizations of the polarizing agents are typically performed in different environments (e.g., strength of magnetic field and microwave power) than typical DNP experiments. Here, we demonstrate a low-cost and home-built setup that enables in situ EPR detection in a dual resonance DNP-NMR/EPR probe using an optical chopper. The optical chopper modulates the microwave irradiation, thereby modulating the longitudinal magnetization (M_z) of the electron spins, which results in a LOngitudinal-Detected (LOD) EPR spectrum. The EPR spectrum acquired for TEMPOL at 6.7 T/188 GHz using a mechanical modulation showed a good agreement with the spectrum acquired using an electrical modulation. Hence, our work provides a proof-of-principle setup that enables an optical chopper EPR spectrometer.