CAREER: Combining Nuclear Magnetic Resonance with Integrated Circuit Technology

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

CAREER: Combining Nuclear Magnetic Resonance with Integrated Circuit Technology Nan Sun (The University of Texas at Austin) Intellectual Merit. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a resonance interaction between atomic nuclei and a radio-frequency magnetic field. It finds a broad array of applications in chemistry, biology, physics, medicine, and material science. Despite its versatility and enormous contributions, existing NMR systems have the constraints of limited sensitivity, low throughput, and long experiment time. In addition, they are bulky, heavy, and expensive. These drawbacks have limited their capability and accessibility. The PI proposes to address the aforementioned limitations and create novel NMR systems with significant performance enhancement and substantial size and cost reduction. To this end, the PI plans to systematically introduce integrated circuit (IC) technology to the field of NMR. IC technology can potentially bring transformational change to the design of NMR coil and transceiver, which are two main components of an NMR system. More specifically, the PI will investigate the following 4 areas: 1) the PI plans to increase the throughput of NMR spectroscopy by developing an integrated probehead that contains a large array of transceivers and planar microcoils, so that many samples can be analyzed simultaneously; 2) the PI aims to create a miniature NMR spectroscopy system by developing a highly-sensitive transceiver IC chip and a small but homogeneous magnet, made possible by a novel hybrid shimming technique; 3) the PI will study wideband integrated transceivers and coils to develop a miniature high-accuracy high-spatial-resolution NMR-based magnetic field sensor; 4) the PI proposes to create a mobile single-sided NMR system by designing a novel multichannel transceiver IC with a multilayer microcoil array. Broader Impact. The proposed research topics, if successful, will bring major impacts to the NMR field and its broad application fields. For example, an increased throughput for NMR spectroscopy will allow fast screening of combinatorial libraries and accelerate the drug discovery process; a miniature spectroscopy system will enable NMR spectra to be measured on small lab benches and in the field; a low-cost NMR magnetometer will make the usefulness of high-resolution magnetic-field sensing widely accessible; and an integrated sensitive single-sided NMR system will make possible mobile screening of any arbitrary object with reduced experiment time. In addition to the research, the PI plans to actively involve local industry in both teaching and research, develop effective teaching styles, and use state-of-the-art information technology for innovative education. The PI will also continue promoting female and minority students in engineering and reach o