The above images, taken using xenon in solution, hint at the potential of the process.
Xenon is an inert gas that is readily absorbed in solutions and commonly used as an anesthetic.
Leading the team of collaborators who developed this new technique were Alexander Pines, with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division and UCB's Department of Chemistry, and Gil Navon, of the School of Chemistry at Tel-Aviv University. Working with them were Stephan Appelt, Toomas Room, Yi-Qiao Song, and Rebecca Taylor. The research achievments of Alex Pines have been consistently outstanding for over two decades. These new results are a major step forward in dramatically extending the power of NMR in chemical and biological research. Both NMR spectroscopy and MRI imaging are based on the tiny magnetic moments produced by the spin of atomic nuclei.