High Field Power Pulsed EPR

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The HIPER project is an ambitious project which started in May 2004 and was funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under the UK research councils' basic technology programme. The main objective of the project is to construct a revolutionary new high field pulse EPR spectrometer that will allow Fourier transform (FT) EPR to be used as a general technique for the first time and to demonstrate breakthrough applications across the scientific spectrum. We aim:

  1. To develop and demonstrate the technologies that will be required to construct next generation high field pulse EPR systems with short pulse lengths and dead-times.
  2. To construct a user friendly, state-of-the-art pulse EPR spectrometer at 94GHz with single nanosecond pi/2 pulses and nanosecond dead-times with GHz detection bandwidths, incorporating phase cycling that will permit multi-dimensional, multi-resonance experiments including 2-D EPR, 2-D ENDOR, 2-D ELDOR, 2-D ESEEM, and to integrate the system with a state-of-the-art ultra-fast pulse laser facility that already exists at St Andrews.
  3. To establish a site-directed spin labeling program at Dundee University and St Andrews University.
  4. To establish a parallel pulse EPR applications program that will initially use a commercial state-of-the-art 10GHz pulse spectrometer with ENDOR and ELDOR facilities. This will target applications in site directed spin labeling in biomolecules, free radical chemistry and biochemistry, transition metal ion chemistry and biochemistry, catalysis, light emitting polymers, defects and impurities in semiconductors and crystals, molecular magnets and magnetic recording media and geological dating as well as looking at applications in spintronics, nanophotonics and quantum computing. This project involves a large team of collaborators with physicists from St Andrews, Dundee, Warwick, Bath and Daresbury, chemists from St Andrews, Manchester , Cardiff and East Anglia and biochemists from St Andrews, Dundee, Queen Mary College London and the John Innes Centre.

The following pages discuss our approach to and challenges in making such a high performance instrument.

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