Rapid Estimation of T₁ for Quantitative NMR

Quantitative NMR spectroscopy (qNMR) is an essential tool in organic chemistry, with applications including reaction monitoring, mechanistic analysis, and purity determination. Establishing the correct acquisition rate for consecutive qNMR scans requires knowledge of the longitudinal relaxation time constants (T₁) for all of the nuclei being monitored. We report a simple method that is about 10-fold faster than the conventional inversion recovery technique for the estimation of T₁.