Parahydrogen-induced polarization of nuclear spins provides enhancements of NMR signals for various nuclei of up to four to five orders of magnitude in magnetic fields of modern NMR spectrometers and even higher enhancements in low and ultra-low magnetic fields. It is based on the use of parahydrogen in catalytic hydrogenation reactions which, upon pairwise addition of the two H atoms of parahydrogen, can strongly enhance the NMR signals of reaction intermediates and products in solution. A recent advance in this field is the demonstration that PHIP can be observed not only in homogeneous hydrogenations but also in heterogeneous catalytic reactions. The use of heterogeneous catalysts for generating PHIP provides a number of significant advantages over the homogeneous processes, including the possibility to produce hyperpolarized gases, better control over the hydrogenation process, and the ease of separation of hyperpolarized fluids from the catalyst. The latter advantage is of paramount importance in light of the recent tendency toward utilization of hyperpolarized substances in in vivo spectroscopic and imaging applications of NMR. In addition, PHIP demonstrates the potential to become a useful tool for studying mechanisms of heterogeneous catalytic processes and for in situ studies of operating catalytic reactors. Here, the known examples of PHIP observations in heterogeneous reactions over immobilized transition metal complexes, supported metals, and some other types of heterogeneous catalysts are discussed and the applications of the technique for hypersensitive NMR imaging studies are presented.

Substantial (31)P NMR signal enhancement of more than two orders of magnitude at 7 T for free and bound PPh3 species was observed under reversible interaction of (PPh3)3Ir(H2)Cl with parahydrogen. The large improvement in sensitivity made single-shot (31)P NMR imaging of a model object possible. The observed effects are temperature and magnetic field dependent as shown experimentally and theoretically.

Traditional nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy relies on the versatile chemical information conveyed by spectra. To complement conventional NMR, Laplace NMR explores diffusion and relaxation phenomena to reveal details on molecular motions. Under a broad concept of ultrafast multidimensional Laplace NMR, here we introduce an ultrafast diffusion-relaxation correlation experiment enhancing the resolution and information content of corresponding 1D experiments as well as reducing the experiment time by one to two orders of magnitude or more as compared with its conventional 2D counterpart. We demonstrate that the method allows one to distinguish identical molecules in different physical environments and provides chemical resolution missing in NMR spectra. Although the sensitivity of the new method is reduced due to spatial encoding, the single-scan approach enables one to use hyperpolarized substances to boost the sensitivity by several orders of magnitude, significantly enhancing the overall sensitivity of multidimensional Laplace NMR.

Nuclear spin polarization can be significantly increased through the process of hyperpolarization, leading to an increase in the sensitivity of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments by 4–8 orders of magnitude. Hyperpolarized gases, unlike liquids and solids, can be more readily separated and purified from the compounds used to mediate the hyperpolarization processes. These pure hyperpolarized gases enabled many novel MRI applications including the visualization of void spaces, imaging of lung function, and remote detection. Additionally, hyperpolarized gases can be dissolved in liquids and can be used as sensitive molecular probes and reporters. This mini-review covers the fundamentals of the preparation of hyperpolarized gases and focuses on selected applications of interest to biomedicine and materials science.

Substantial NMR signal enhancements provided by parahydrogen-induced polarization (PHIP) are associated with the ability of a catalyst to incorporate both H atoms of a dihydrogen molecule into the same product molecule. Therefore, PHIP can provide valuable information about the mechanisms and kinetics of catalytic hydrogenation reactions as well as produce hyperpolarized molecules for sensitivity enhancement in NMR. In this work, the PHIP technique was applied to study the structure sensitivity and the support effects on the degree of pairwise H 2 addition in propene hydrogenation over supported platinum catalysts. Four series of Pt catalysts supported on Al 2 O 3 , SiO 2 , ZrO 2 , and TiO 2 were examined. A nontrivial dependence of the selectivity toward pairwise H 2 addition on the Pt particle size was found. Its analysis indicates that at least three types of different active sites coexist on the catalysts surface. Among them, the major one is responsible for the nonpairwise H 2 addition to the double bond, whereas pairwise addition can proceed on the other two minor active sites. An explanation of the nature of these active sites is proposed. A substantial increase in the pairwise addition selectivity was found for Pt/TiO 2 catalysts as compared to other catalyst series, possibly due to a strong metalÀsupport interaction taking place even after low temperature catalyst reduction.

Ansa-aminoborane 1 (ortho-TMP-C6H4-BH2; TMP = 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperid-1-yl), a frustrated Lewis pair with the smallest possible Lewis acidic boryl site (-BH2), is prepared. Although it is present in quenched forms in solution, and BH2 represents an acidic site with reduced hydride affinity, 1 reacts with H2 under mild conditions producing ansa-ammonium trihydroborate 2. The thermodynamic and kinetic features as well as the mechanism of this reaction are studied by variable-temperature NMR spectroscopy, spin-saturation transfer experiments, and DFT calculations, which provide comprehensive insight into the nature of 1.

The parahydrogen-induced polarization (PHIP) phenomenon, observed when parahydrogen is used in H addition processes, provides a means for substantial NMR signal enhancements and mechanistic studies of chemical reactions. Commonly, noble metal complexes are used for parahydrogen activation, whereas metal-free activation is rare. Herein, we report a series of unimolecular metal-free frustrated Lewis pairs based on an ansa-aminoborane (AAB) moiety in the context of PHIP. These molecules, which have a "molecular tweezers" structure, differ in their substituents at the boryl site (-H, -Ph, -o-iPr-Ph, and -Mes). PHIP effects were observed for all the AABs after exposing their solutions to parahydrogen in a wide temperature range, and experimental measurements of their kinetic and thermodynamic parameters were performed. A theoretical analysis of their nuclear spin polarization effects is presented, and the roles of chemical exchange, chemical equilibrium and spin dynamics are discussed in terms of the key dimensionless parameters. The analysis allowed us to formulate the prerequisites for achieving strong polarization effects with AAB molecules, which can be applied for further design of efficient metal-free tweezers-like molecules for PHIP. Mechanistic (chemical and physical) aspects of the observed effects are discussed in detail. In addition, we performed quantum chemical calculations, which confirmed that the J-coupling between the parahydrogen-originated protons in AAB-H molecules is mediated through dihydrogen bonding.

In this work, the contribution of the pairwise H(2) addition to the overall reaction mechanism was studied under the systematic variation of both the Pd particle size and the properties of the catalyst support using the hydrogenation of propene and propyne over supported Pd catalysts as representative examples. For Pd supported on alumina, silica and zirconia, only propene formed upon hydrogenation of propyne with para-H(2) exhibits hyperpolarization. In contrast, propane formed in hydrogenation of propyne or propene is not hyperpolarized. This demonstrates the existence of different routes of H(2) addition to double and triple bonds on supported Pd catalysts. The unique ability of Pd/TiO(2) catalysts to add H(2) in a pairwise manner not only to the triple but also to the double bond is demonstrated. This finding indicates that the Pd-support interaction is of primary importance in determining not only the magnitude of the hyperpolarization of the NMR lines of the reaction products but even the involvement of the pairwise H(2) addition and hence the mechanism of heterogeneous hydrogenation. The comparative analysis of the selectivities toward pairwise H(2) addition suggested the existence of different surface active sites responsible for all three reaction routes: the direct total hydrogenation of propyne into propane, its selective hydrogenation into propene, and hydrogenation of propene into propane. A reaction scheme which accounts for the formation of the observed hyperpolarized and non-polarized reaction products in propyne and propene hydrogenation with para-H(2) over supported Pd catalysts is suggested. For the first time, application of the PHIP technique allowed us to demonstrate that hydrogenation of propene does not take place in the presence of propyne on supported Pd catalysts.