A broadband single-chip transceiver for multi-nuclear NMR probes

In this article, we present an integrated broadband complementary metal-oxide semiconductor single-chip transceiver suitable for the realization of multi-nuclear pulsed nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) probes. The realized single-chip transceiver can be interfaced with on-chip integrated microcoils or external LC resonators operating in the range from 1 MHz to 1 GHz. The dimension of the chip is about 1 mm(2). It consists of a radio-frequency (RF) power amplifier, a low-noise RF preamplifier, a frequency mixer, an audio-frequency amplifier, and fully integrated transmit-receive switches. As specific example, we show its use for multi-nuclear NMR spectroscopy. With an integrated coil of about 150 mu m external diameter, a H-1 spin sensitivity of about 1.5 x 10(13) spins/Hz(1/2) is achieved at 7 T. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.