SWET for Secure Water Suppression on Probes with High Quality Factor

Abstract

Water suppression by selective preirradiation is increasingly difficult to achieve on probeheads with high quality factor because of the opposing forces of radiation damping. Here we show that a simple modification to the WET scheme provides reliable water suppression in aqueous solutions of proteins and peptides with minimal saturation of the H(alpha) protons. The scheme is shown to work also with dilute peptide solutions. It is recommended to maintain the water suppression during the evolution time of COSY experiments by weak selective irradiation that causes only minimal Bloch-Siegert shifts. The new water-suppression scheme suppresses the water magnetization by spatial scrambling. Traditional water suppression by preirradiation is similarly based more on water scrambling due to the radiofrequency inhomogeneity than on relaxation effects.