Theoretical aspects of dynamic nuclear polarization in the solid state - the solid effect

Dynamic nuclear polarization has gained high popularity in recent years, due to advances in the experimental aspects of this methodology for increasing the NMR and MRI signals of relevant chemical and biological compounds. The DNP mechanism relies on the microwave (MW) irradiation induced polarization transfer from unpaired electrons to the nuclei in a sample. In this publication we present nuclear polarization enhancements of model systems in the solid state at high magnetic fields. These results were obtained by numerical calculations based on the spin density operator formalism. Here we restrict ourselves to samples with low electron concentrations, where the dipolar electron-electron interactions can be ignored. Thus the DNP enhancement of the polarizations of the nuclei close to the electrons is described by the Solid Effect mechanism. Our numerical results demonstrate the dependence of the polarization enhancement on the MW irradiation power and frequency, the hyperfine and nuclear dipole-dipole spin interactions, and the relaxation parameters of the system. The largest spin system considered in this study contains one electron and eight nuclei. In particular, we discuss the influence of the nuclear concentration and relaxation on the polarization of the core nuclei, which are coupled to an electron, and are responsible for the transfer of polarization to the bulk nuclei in the sample via spin diffusion.