Natural abundance (14)N and (15)N solid-state NMR of pharmaceuticals and their polymorphs.

(14)N ultra-wideline (UW), (1)H{(15)N} indirectly-detected HETCOR (idHETCOR) and (15)N dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) solid-state NMR (SSNMR) experiments, in combination with plane-wave density functional theory (DFT) calculations of (14)N EFG tensors, were utilized to characterize a series of nitrogen-containing active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), including HCl salts of scopolamine, alprenolol, isoprenaline, acebutolol, dibucaine, nicardipine, and ranitidine. A case study applying these methods for the differentiation of polymorphs of bupivacaine HCl is also presented. All experiments were conducted upon samples with naturally-abundant nitrogen isotopes.

Rapid acquisition of 14N solid-state NMR spectra with broadband cross polarization.

Nitrogen is an element of utmost importance in chemistry, biology and materials science. Of its two NMR-active isotopes, (14)N and (15)N, solid-state NMR (SSNMR) experiments are rarely conducted upon the former, due to its low gyromagnetic ratio (γ) and broad powder patterns arising from first-order quadrupolar interactions. In this work, we propose a methodology for the rapid acquisition of high quality (14)N SSNMR spectra that is easy to implement, and can be used for a variety of nitrogen-containing systems.