Accessing Long-Lived Disconnected Spin‑¹/₂ Eigenstates through Spins > ¹/₂

Pairs of chemically equivalent (or nearly equivalent) spin-¹/₂ nuclei have been shown to create disconnected eigenstates that are very long-lived compared with the lifetime of pure magnetization (<i>T</i>₁). Here the classes of molecules known to have accessible long-lived states are extended to include those with chemically equivalent spin-¹/₂ nuclei accessed by coupling to nuclei with spin > ¹/₂, in this case deuterium. At first, this appears surprising because the quadrupolar interactions present in nuclei with spin > ¹/₂ are known to cause fast relaxation. Yet it is shown that scalar couplings between deuterium and carbon can guide population into and out of long-lived states, i.e., those immune from the dominant relaxation mechanisms. This implies that it may be practical to consider compounds with ¹³C pairs directly bound to deuterium (or even ¹⁴N) as candidates for storage of polarization. In addition, experiments show that simple deuteration of molecules with ¹³C pairs at their natural abundance is sufficient for successful lifetime measurements