High magnetic field science and its application in the United States: A magnetic resonance perspective

The special issue of the Journal of Magnetic Resonance addresses the issue of high magnetic field science and its application in the US. High-field cutting-edge magnets play central roles in chemical, biochemical and biological research, primarily through the techniques of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR). Two distinct classes of NMR techniques are important in studies of chemical, biochemical, and biological systems. A major new trend in both solution NMR and solid state NMR is the exploitation of dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) for sensitivity enhancements. DNP is a process in which the large polarizations of electron spins in a strong magnetic field are partially transferred to nuclear spins by irradiation of EPR transitions, resulting in large enhancements of nuclear spin polarizations and NMR signals.