Quadrupole sensitive pulse for signal filtering

A longstanding problem in quadrupolar NMR of semi-solids is the selection of signals originating from ordered nuclei, i.e. those that experience a non-vanishing quadrupolar coupling. Established techniques, such as for example multiple-quantum filters are not adequate in situations when the radio frequency power is on the order of the quadrupolar coupling or the quadrupolar relaxation rates, such as may be the case on an MRI scanner, or in ex situ applications. In this manuscript we show a new method for the selective excitation of ordered spin-3/2 nuclei, which produces the desired results when the radio frequency power is approximately equal or smaller than quadrupolar frequency. Using a combination of simulations and experiments with ²³Na in NaCl solution, Pf1-solutions, and bovine patellar cartilage samples we further show how the value of the quadrupolar frequency and global features of a quadrupolar coupling distribution can be extracted from these experiments.