HR-DOSY as a new tool for the study of chemical exchange phenomena

DOSY NMR spectroscopy can be a fast and easy method to establish qualitatively the relative order of magnitude of the exchange rates of systems in slow exchange in chemical shift. By measuring a series of DOSY spectra of a two-site exchange system, where exchange occurs between sites with different diffusion coefficients, we show that by increasing the diffusion time among experiments it is possible to extract information about the relative exchange rates of protons with the bulk solvent and therefore infer their solvent accessibility. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.