DIY NMR: A hands-on approach to microcoils, magnets and hyperpolarization hardware

Summary

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) is a widely applied analytical technique in chemistry to identify molecular structures and chemical compositions of unknown samples. In medicine it is applied as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Complexity, cost and proprietary hardware limit the more widespread adoption of the NMR technique. We have simplified the NMR detector ((micro-)coil) as well as the production method, which can now be done in a normal lab environment. Moreover, we show how a strong magnetic field for NMR measurements can be produced using a homebuilt magnet that costs around €1000, which is affordable compared to standard magnet setups. Finally, we show how to convert a cheap 3D-printer kit into a programmable, 3 channel syringe pump set, to handle microfluidic samples for NMR and other applications. Hyperpolarization is applied to improve the sensitivity by orders of magnitude, at very low additional cost. With this combination of approaches we hope to make NMR techniques more accessible to researchers.