An NMR thermometer for cryogenic magic-angle spinning NMR: the spin-lattice relaxation of (127)I in cesium iodide.

The accurate temperature measurement of solid samples under magic-angle spinning (MAS) is difficult in the cryogenic regime. It has been demonstrated by Thurber et al. (J. Magn. Reson., 196 (2009) 84-87) [10] that the temperature dependent spin-lattice relaxation time constant of (79)Br in KBr powder can be useful for measuring sample temperature under MAS over a wide temperature range (20-296 K). However the value of T(1) exceeds 3 min at temperatures below 20K, which is inconveniently long. In this communication, we show that the spin-lattice relaxation time constant of (127)I in CsI powder can be used to accurately measure sample temperature under MAS within a reasonable experimental time down to 10 K.