Fast Broadband Inversion by Adiabatic Pulses

Despite the advantages of compensation for resonance offset and B1 inhomogeneity, adiabatic pulses are not yet in general use in high-resolution NMR, often because of the conception that these pulses require longer time or increased power to perform. We show that adiabatic pulses with tangential frequency sweeps and other frequency-modulation functions can be optimized to accomplish 13C and 1H broadband inversion using pulse lengths of 192 and 64 micro(s), respectively, at B1 strengths available with modern high-resolution probes.