Coal and Coal Constituent Studies by Advanced EMR Techniques

Advanced electronic magnetic resonance (EMR) methods are used to examine properties of coals, chars, and molecular species related to constituents of coal. We have achieved substantial progress on upgrading the high field (HF) EMR (W-band, 95 GHz) spectrometers that are especially advantageous for such studies. Particularly, we have built a new second W-band instrument (Mark II) in addition to our Mark I. Briefly, Mark II features: (i) an Oxford custom-built 7 T superconducting magnet which is scannable from 0 to 7 T at up to 0.5 T/min; (ii) water-cooled coaxial solenoid with up to ±550 G scan under digital (15 bits resolution) computer control; (iii) custom-engineered precision feed-back circuit, which is used to drive this solenoid, is based on an Ultrastab 860R sensor that has linearity better than 5 ppm and resolution of 0.05 ppm; (iv) an Oxford CF 1200 cryostat for variable temperature studies from 1.8 to 340 K. During this grant period we have completed several key upgrades of both Mark I and II, particularly microwave bridge, W-band probehead, and computer interfaces. We utilize these improved instruments for HF EMR studies of spin-spin interaction and existence of different paramagnetic species in carbonaceous solids.