High-resolution NMR Magnet Research Articles

Gradient-Coil Design by Simulated Annealing

An NMR shim coil design method that addresses the severe spatial constraints of miniaturized dipole magnets is introduced. The fundamental design element, a collection of straight wires, is shown to be sufficient for producing a complete set of shim fields of high mathematical order. In accord with these theoretical considerations, a shim set is constructed using four wires in each of four directions to create all first through fourth order fields, except one. This shim set, with its supporting structure, occupies only 2 mm of the available 5 mm gap in a small 1.6 T magnet. However, the fields produced by the individual wires are found to differ significantly from theoretical expectations. To produce the desired harmonic shim fields, the magnetic field of each of the 32 wires is mapped in three dimensions, and linear combinations of these maps are formed. The resulting shim fields are found to be very pure. The shims are used in a prototype high-resolution NMR magnet in which the 1.0 mm sample size is only possible due to the thinness of the shim set. The resulting spectra demonstrate shimming to high resolution (<25 ppb FWHM) without undue heating effects.