Eur. Phys. J. D 22, 65-73 (2003)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2002-00212-2

NMR study of the dissolution of laser-polarized xenon

Laboratoire Commun de RMN, DSM/DRECAM/Service de Chimie Moléculaire (URA CNRS/CEA 331) , CEA/Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France

Corresponding author: ^a hdesvaux@cea.fr

Received: 29 April 2002
Revised: 26 July 2002
Published online: 22 October 2002

Abstract

NMR of laser-polarized xenon is used to probe the dissolution behaviour of the noble gas in different liquids. The dissolution and self-relaxation rates are extracted via a macroscopic model, and comparison of the decay rate of the xenon magnetization in deuterated and non-deuterated solvent pairs allows the determination of the pure dipole-dipole contribution to relaxation. A transient convective effect, tentatively assigned to the xenon concentration gradient, is observed and characterized by diffusion encoding MRI experiments. The flow of xenon penetrates inside the solvent near the walls of the NMR tube, the longitudinal images showing a “∩” shape, the transverse ones a “O” shape. This convection effect has implications for delivery conditions of laser-polarized xenon in continuous flow experiments and magnetic resonance imaging.