Origin of the Residual Linewidth Under FSLG-Based Homonuclear Decoupling in MAS Solid-State NMR
Abstract. Homonuclear decoupling sequences in solid-state NMR under magic-angle spinning (MAS) show experimentally significantly larger residual linewidth than expected from Floquet theory to second order. We present an in-depth theoretical and experimental analysis of the origin of the residual linewidth in frequency-switched Lee-Goldburg (FSLG) based decoupling sequences. We analyze the effect of experimental pulse-shape errors (e.g. pulse transients and B1-field inhomogeneities) and use a Floquet-theory based description of higher-order error terms that arise from the interference between the MAS rotation and the pulse sequence. It is shown that the magnitude of the third-order auto term of a single homo- or heteronuclear coupled spin pair is important and leads to significant line broadening under FSLG decoupling. Furthermore, we show the dependence of these third-order error terms on the angle of the effective field with the B0 field. An analysis of second-order cross terms is presented that shows that the influence of three-spin terms is small since they are averaged by the pulse sequence. The importance of the static rf-field inhomogeneity is discussed and shown to be the main source of residual line broadening while pulse transients do not seem to play an important role. Experimentally, the influence of the combination of these error terms is shown by using restricted samples and pulse-transient compensation. The results show that all terms are additive but the major contribution to the residual linewidth comes from the rf-field inhomogeneity for the standard implementation of FSLG sequences, which is significant even for samples with a restricted volume.