CAREER: Combining Nuclear Magnetic Resonance with Integrated Circuit Technology

职业：将核磁共振技术与集成电路技术相结合南孙(德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校)智力过人。核磁共振是原子核与射频磁场之间的共振相互作用。它在化学、生物、物理、医学和材料科学中有广泛的应用。尽管现有的核磁共振系统具有多功能性和巨大的贡献，但它存在灵敏度有限、吞吐量低和实验时间长的限制。此外，它们体积大、重量重、价格昂贵。这些缺点限制了它们的能力和可获得性。PI建议解决上述限制，并创建具有显著性能增强和显著尺寸和成本降低的新型核磁共振系统。为此，国际核磁共振学会计划将集成电路(IC)技术系统地引入核磁共振领域。集成电路技术可能会给核磁共振线圈和收发信机的设计带来革命性的变化，这是核磁共振系统的两个主要组件。更具体地说，PI将研究以下4个领域：1)PI计划通过开发包含大量收发机和平面微线圈的集成探针头来增加核磁共振波谱的吞吐量，以便可以同时分析许多样品；2)PI旨在通过开发高灵敏度的收发信机IC芯片和小但均匀的磁体来创建微型核磁共振光谱系统，该系统可以通过新的混合匀场技术实现；3)PI将研究宽带集成收发器和线圈，以开发基于小型高精度、高空间分辨率的核磁共振磁场传感器；4)PI提出通过设计一种新型的具有多层微线圈阵列的多通道收发芯片来创建移动单面核磁共振系统。更广泛的影响。所提出的研究课题如获成功，将对核磁共振领域及其广阔的应用领域产生重大影响。例如，核磁共振波谱吞吐量的增加将允许快速筛选组合文库并加快药物发现过程；微型波谱系统将使人们能够在小型实验室工作台和现场测量核磁共振谱；低成本核磁共振磁强计将使高分辨率磁场传感的实用性得到广泛应用；集成的灵敏单面核磁共振系统将使移动筛选任何对象成为可能，并减少实验时间。除了这项研究外，创新教育署亦计划积极让本地业界参与教学和研究，发展有效的教学模式，并利用最先进的资讯科技进行创新教育。国际学生联合会还将继续促进女性和少数族裔学生学习工程学，并达到

CAREER: Combining Nuclear Magnetic Resonance with Integrated Circuit TechnologyNan Sun (The University of Texas at Austin)Intellectual Merit. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a resonance interaction between atomic nuclei and a radio-frequency magnetic field. It finds a broad array of applications in chemistry, biology, physics, medicine, and material science. Despite its versatility and enormous contributions, existing NMR systems have the constraints of limited sensitivity, low throughput, and long experiment time. In addition, they are bulky, heavy, and expensive. These drawbacks have limited their capability and accessibility. The PI proposes to address the aforementioned limitations and create novel NMR systems with significant performance enhancement and substantial size and cost reduction. To this end, the PI plans to systematically introduce integrated circuit (IC) technology to the field of NMR. IC technology can potentially bring transformational change to the design of NMR coil and transceiver, which are two main components of an NMR system. More specifically, the PI will investigate the following 4 areas: 1) the PI plans to increase the throughput of NMR spectroscopy by developing an integrated probehead that contains a large array of transceivers and planar microcoils, so that many samples can be analyzed simultaneously; 2) the PI aims to create a miniature NMR spectroscopy system by developing a highly-sensitive transceiver IC chip and a small but homogeneous magnet, made possible by a novel hybrid shimming technique; 3) the PI will study wideband integrated transceivers and coils to develop a miniature high-accuracy high-spatial-resolution NMR-based magnetic field sensor; 4) the PI proposes to create a mobile single-sided NMR system by designing a novel multichannel transceiver IC with a multilayer microcoil array. Broader Impact. The proposed research topics, if successful, will bring major impacts to the NMR field and its broad application fields. For example, an increased throughput for NMR spectroscopy will allow fast screening of combinatorial libraries and accelerate the drug discovery process; a miniature spectroscopy system will enable NMR spectra to be measured on small lab benches and in the field; a low-cost NMR magnetometer will make the usefulness of high-resolution magnetic-field sensing widely accessible; and an integrated sensitive single-sided NMR system will make possible mobile screening of any arbitrary object with reduced experiment time. In addition to the research, the PI plans to actively involve local industry in both teaching and research, develop effective teaching styles, and use state-of-the-art information technology for innovative education. The PI will also continue promoting female and minority students in engineering and reach o