Abstract Two-dimensional zero-field nutation NQR spectroscopy has been used to determine the full quadrupolar tensor of spin - 3/2 nuclei in serveral molecular crystals containing the 3 5 Cl and 7 5 As nuclei. The problems of reconstructing 2D-nutation NQR spectra using conventional methods and the advantages of using implementation of the maximum entropy method (MEM) are analyzed. It is shown that the replacement of conventional Fourier transform by an alternative data processing by MEM in 2D NQR spectroscopy leads to sensitivity improvement, reduction of instrumental artefacts and truncation errors, shortened data acquisition times and suppression of noise, while at the same time increasing the resolution. The effects of off-resonance irradiation in nutation experiments are demonstrated both experimentally and theoretically. It is shown that off-resonance nutation spectroscopy is a useful extension of the conventional on-resonance experiments, thus facilitating the determination of asymmetry parameters in multiple spectrum. The theoretical description of the off-resonance effects in 2D nutation NQR spectroscopy is given, and general exact formulas for the asymmetry parameter are obtained. In off-resonance conditions, the resolution of the nutation NQR spectrum decreases with the spectrometer offset. However, an enhanced resolution can be achieved by using the maximum entropy method in 2D-data reconstruction.
