OPENCORE NMR: Open-source core modules for implementing an integrated FPGA-based NMR spectrometer

Abstract

A tool kit for implementing an integrated FPGA-based NMR spectrometer [K. Takeda, A highly integrated FPGA-based nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 78 (2007) 033103], referred to as the OPENCORE NMR spectrometer, is open to public. The system is composed of an FPGA chip and several peripheral boards for USB communication, direct-digital synthesis (DDS), RF transmission, signal acquisition, etc. Inside the FPGA chip have been implemented a number of digital modules including three pulse programmers, the digital part of DDS, a digital quadrature demodulator, dual digital low-pass filters, and a PC interface. These FPGA core modules are written in VHDL, and their source codes are available on our website. This work aims at providing sufficient information with which one can, given some facility in circuit board manufacturing, reproduce the OPENCORE NMR spectrometer presented here. Also, the users are encouraged to modify the design of spectrometer according to their own specific needs. A home-built NMR spectrometer can serve complementary roles to a sophisticated commercial spectrometer, should one comes across such new ideas that require heavy modification to hardware inside the spectrometer. This work can lower the barrier of building a handmade NMR spectrometer in the laboratory, and promote novel and exciting NMR experiments.