Suitability of Different 13C Solid-state NMR Techniques in the Characterization of Humic Acids

Abstract

Qualitative and quantitative analyses of humic acids (HAs) with five different 13C solid-state NMR techniques were assessed using HAs of various origins and locations. The NMR techniques compared are: (1) direct polarization/magic angle spinning (DP/MAS) at 13 kHz, (2) conventional cross polarization (CP)/MAS at 5 kHz, (3) ramp-CP/MAS at 8 kHz, (4) CP/total sideband suppression (TOSS) at 4.5 kHz, and (5) DP/MAS corrected by CP/spin-lattice relaxation with TOSS. The spectra from the five techniques were first compared qualitatively. Then, each spectrum was divided into eight regions for quantitative evaluation. DP/MAS spectra were used as quantitative references. Ramp-CP/MAS and CP/TOSS spectra gave consistently better results than those of the conventional CP/MAS spectra at a 13C frequency of 75 MHz, which were incorrect due to spinning sidebands. CP/MAS at low magnetic fields (22.6 and 50.6 MHz 13C frequency) indicated improved integration results but lower resolution. Correction factors calculated by comparison with DP/MAS will be useful to convert the non-quantitative peak areas in the CP/TOSS and ramp-CP/MAS spectra into more quantitative results.