Heteronuclear decoupling in rotating solids

A simple two pulse phase modulation (TPPM) scheme greatly reduces the residual linewidths arising from insufficient proton decoupling power in double resonance magic angle spinning (MAS) experiments. Optimization of pulse lengths and phases in the sequence produces substantial improvements in both the resolution and sensitivity of dilute spins (e.g., 13C) over a broad range of spinning speeds at high magnetic field. The theoretical complications introduced by large homo- and heteronuclear interactions among the spins, as well as the amplitude modulation imposed by MAS, are explored analytically and numerically. To our knowledge, this method is the first phase-switched sequence to exhibit improvement over continuous-wave (cw) decoupling in a strongly coupled homogeneous spin system undergoing sample spinning.