New investigations of technical rhodium and iridium catalysts in homogeneous phase employing para-hydrogen induced polarization

It is shown that the para-hydrogen induced polarization (PHIP) phenomenon in homogenous solution containing the substrate styrene is also observable employing simple inorganic systems of the form MCl(3)center dot xH(2)O (M= Rh, Ir) as catalyst. Such observation confirms that already very simple metal complexes enable the creation of PHIP signal enhancement in solution. This opens up new pathways to increase the sensitivity of NMR and MRT by PHIP enhancement using cost-effective catalysts and will be essential for further mechanistic studies of simple transition metal systems. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved