| The phenomenon of magnetic resonance has played a critical role in our current understanding of the physical world. From routine organic product analysis to complex protein structure determination to materials chemistry and medical imaging, magnetic resonance has provided the chemist, biologist, physicist, and medical practitioner with an incredibly powerful tool to explore the world around us. With the advent of time-domain nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and its imaging counterpart, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), systems undergoing dynamics can be studied in a broad range of spatial and temporal regimes. However, the limitation in sensitivity owing to the weak nuclear magnetic moment generally precludes examination of systems on the micron scale with high spatial and temporal resolution. The work presented in this dissertation aims to challenge the traditional paradigm of high field magnetic resonance as being only applicable to relatively large systems undergoing slow dynamics. While a variety of topics are covered, each shares in common the ability to take advantage of the time domain in non-trivial ways. The main focus is on using multidimensional encoding and detection schemes that act to increase the sensitivity while providing for additional dynamical information about the system under study. Experimental results on systems ranging from porous materials to lab-on-a-chip devices are presented that validate the approach. |
