A supplementary coil for 2H decoupling with commercial HCN MAS probes

Partial deuteration is a powerful tool to increase coherence life times and spectral resolution in proton solid-state NMR. The J coupling to deuterium needs, however, to be decoupled to maintain the good resolution in the (usually indirect) 13C dimension(s). We present a simple and reversible way to expand a commercial 1.3 mm HCN MAS probe with a 2H channel with sufficient field strength for J-decoupling of deuterium, namely 2–3 kHz. The coil is placed at the outside of the stator and requires no significant modifications to the probe. The performance and the realizable gains in sensitivity and resolution are demonstrated using perdeuterated ubiquitin, with selectively CHD2-labeled methyl groups.