Parahydrogen-induced
polarization (PHIP) is an NMR hyperpolarization
technique that increases nuclear spin polarization by orders of magnitude,
and it is particularly well-suited to study hydrogenation reactions.
However, the use of high-field NMR spectroscopy is not always possible,
especially in the context of potential industrial-scale reactor applications.
On the other hand, the direct low-field NMR detection of reaction
products with enhanced nuclear spin polarization is challenging due
to near complete signal cancellation from nascent parahydrogen protons.
We show that hydrogenation products prepared by PHIP can be irradiated
with weak (on the order of spin–spin couplings of a few hertz)
alternating magnetic field (called Spin-Lock Induced Crossing or SLIC)
and consequently efficiently detected at low magnetic field (e.g.,
0.05 T used here) using examples of several types of organic molecules
containing a vinyl moiety. The detected hyperpolarized signals from
several reaction products at tens of millimolar concentrations were
enhanced by 10000-fold, producing NMR signals an order of magnitude
greater than the background signal from protonated solvents.