A general review of applications of selective excitation techniques is provided. The different methods for suppression of solvent signal are summarized. The theoretical basis of selective population inversion and selective polarization transfer is considered and applications are treated. Direct observation of chemical-exchange processes is discussed for both the two-site and the multi-site system. Finally, the potential of selective excitation techniques for extracting structural and dynamic information from single-and double-selective relaxation rates is addressed, with particular emphasis given to N M R studies of small ligands bound to macromolecules.
THE DYNAMIC RANGE PROBLEM AND SUPPRESSION OF THE SOLVENT SIGNALThe intensity of the solvent signal is usually much greater than any other signal in the NMR spectrum. In I3C NMR of nonaqueous solutions, the problem can be avoided by using I3Cdepleted solvents, but the use of deuterium-enriched solvents does not completely eliminate the problem, especially in aqueous solutions where chemical exchange yields a residual intense HDO signal. Moreover, such exchange phenomena cancel all resonances of exchangeable protons from the spectrum, and an enrichment of less than 20% is usually desirable. Because the computer has a finite word length, a limit is placed on the number of accumulations that can be stored before Fourier transformation. When the largest protonic signal reaches the limit of this amplitude-modulated range, the signal is normalized to prevent overflow.A convenient method of solvent-signal suppression is saturation of the solvent resonance with a long, selective, gated pulse at the H,O resonant frequency immediately before the nonselective observation pulse (I, 2). Complications may arise from transfer of saturation to other exchangeable protons when their spin-lattice relaxation rates are slower than the exchange rate (3).