On the role of experimental imperfections in constructing 1H spin diffusion NMR plots for domain size measurements

We discuss the precision of 1D chemical-shift-based ¹H spin diffusion NMR experiments as well as straightforward experimental protocols for reducing errors. The ¹H spin diffusion NMR experiments described herein are useful for samples that contain components with significant spectral overlap in the ¹H NMR spectrum and also for samples of small mass (<1 mg). We show that even in samples that display little spectral contrast, domain sizes can be determined to a relatively high degree of certainty if common experimental variability is accounted for and known. In particular, one should (1) measure flip angles to high precision (≈±1° flip angle), (2) establish a metric for phase transients to ensure their repeatability, (3) establish a reliable spectral deconvolution procedure to ascertain the deconvolved spectra of the neat components in the composite or blend spin diffusion spectrum, and (4) when possible, perform 1D chemical-shift-based ¹H spin diffusion experiments with zero total integral to partially correct for errors and uncertainties if these requirements cannot fully be implemented. We show that minimizing the degree of phase transients is not a requirement for reliable domain size measurement, but their repeatability is essential, as is knowing their contribution to the spectral offset (i.e. the J₁ coefficient). When performing experiments with zero total integral in the spin diffusion NMR spectrum with carefully measured flip angles and known phase transient effects, the largest contribution to error arises from an uncertainty in the component lineshapes which can be as high as 7%. This uncertainty can be reduced considerably if the component lineshapes deconvolved from the composite or blend spin diffusion spectra adequately match previously acquired pure component spectra.