Simulation studies of instrumental artifacts on spin I=1 double quantum filtered NMR spectroscopy.

We report on the results of a simulation based study of the effect of various experimental artifacts for spin I=1 double quantum filtered NMR. The simulation captures the effects of static field inhomogeneity, finite pulse widths, phase errors, transients and radio frequency field inhomogeneity. We simulated the spectral distortions introduced under these errors for four, eight and sixteen step phase cycles that are well known in the NMR community. The dominating pulse errors are radio frequency field inhomogeneity and antisymmetric pulse transients. These errors result in the reduction of signal intensity as well as an introduction of distortions in the detected double quantum filtered spectrum. Using the simulation tool we studied the improvement one obtains when implementing a sixteen step phase cycle over a four step phase cycle. The results indicate that implementing a sixteen step phase cycle over an eight or four step phase cycle does not result in a significant reduction in the DQF intensity loss, or reduction in spectral distortions for antisymmetric transients. Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.