Soft‐matter analysis by the NMR‐MOUSE

The NMR-MOUSE is a dedicated NMR-device for relaxation measurements in surface-near volume elements of arbitrarily large objects. The concept as well as possible applications in soft matter science are discussed, and further developments are outlined. The magnetic fields of the device are inherently highly inhomogeneous, so that relaxation rates are accessible, whereas spectral chemical shift information cannot be obtained. In consideration of the rather small polarizing magnetic field, almost all studies are performed using 1 H NMR because of the high sensitivity and the large natural abundance of protons. Pulse sequences and their properties in inhomogeneous fields are discussed; effects of multi-echo sequences are described. Different properties of soft matter can empirically be related to an effective transverse relaxation parameter T 2eff .