NMR spectroscopy Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, most commonly known as NMR spectroscopy or magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), is a spectroscopic technique based on re-orientation of atomic nuclei with non-zero nuclear spins in an external magnetic f ...

, receptivity refers to the relative detectability of a particular

element Element or elements may refer to: Science * Chemical element, a pure substance of one type of atom * Heating element, a device that generates heat by electrical resistance * Orbital elements, parameters required to identify a specific orbit of o ...

. Some elements are easily detected, some less so. The receptivity is a function of the abundance of the element's NMR-responsive isotope and that isotope's

gyromagnetic ratio In physics, the gyromagnetic ratio (also sometimes known as the magnetogyric ratio in other disciplines) of a particle or system is the ratio of its magnetic moment to its angular momentum, and it is often denoted by the symbol , gamma. Its SI u ...

(or equivalently, the

nuclear magnetic moment The nuclear magnetic moment is the magnetic moment of an atomic nucleus and arises from the spin of the protons and neutrons. It is mainly a magnetic dipole moment; the quadrupole moment does cause some small shifts in the hyperfine structure ...

). Some isotopes,

tritium Tritium () or hydrogen-3 (symbol T or H) is a rare and radioactive isotope of hydrogen with a half-life of ~12.33 years. The tritium nucleus (t, sometimes called a ''triton'') contains one proton and two neutrons, whereas the nucleus of the ...

for example, have large gyromagnetic ratios but low abundance. Other isotopes, for example ¹⁰³Rh, are highly abundant but have low gyromagnetic ratios. Widely used NMR spectroscopies often focus on highly receptive elements: ¹H, ¹⁹F, and ³¹P.

References

Nuclear magnetic resonance {{NMR-stub