Spectral deconvolution of NMR cross polarization data sets

The COmponent-REsolved (CORE) strategy has been employed, for the first time to solid state NMR spectroscopy. CORE was used to extract two time-dependent spectral components in 24 ²⁹Si{¹H} NMR spectra, recorded on a meso-structured silica material under conditions of cross polarization evolution. No prior assumptions were made about the component bandshapes, which were both found to be skewed to higher chemical shifts. For the silica fragments close to protons this skewness could be rationalized by a distribution of the degree of condensation in the silica network; however, for the other component the non-Gaussian shape was unexpected. We expect that the same strategy could be applied to a range of experiments in solid-state NMR spectroscopy, where spectral distributions or kinetic parameters need to be accurately extracted.