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Could this be used to non-destructively test pills?

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flicker:
This is really neat. Unlike NMR, there's no fussing trying to get a uniform magnetic field (or being limited to the earth's field). Way easier to build in that sense.

Probably <$1k to build as is, without any further optimization, which is not bad for analytical stuff. And it would be a little annoying to use with all the tuning currently, but maybe you could design out some of the tuned elements with a fast enough TR switch.

What I'm wondering is how well it distinguishes relevant compounds. N and Cl are the common NQR-active elements, so say you are measuring the chemical environment of N atom. Looks like dimethylamine, diethylamine, and methamphetamine HCl easily distinguished (10.1016/j.ssnmr.2012.02.003). Methamphetamine vs. amphetamine should be easy, but methamphetamine vs MDMA is going to be a lot less of a difference.  If you are considering any analog with any kind of ring substitutions, I bet it gets tricky to correctly identify them. Imagine you are changing a methoxy to an ethoxy on a phenethylamine. That extension is two single bonds, two or three conjugated bonds, and then three more single bonds away from your probe nucleus. No experience with the technique, but it seems ambitious to detect that kind of small change and distinguish it from other similar small changes.

That being said, because this looks a lot more approachable than building an NMR instrument from scratch, I really hope my skepticism is misplaced. Need to find some better comparisons with spectra from closely-related compounds.

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