Radiofrequency field propagation in conductive NMR samples

Abstract Solutions for the magnetic fields in and around spherical conductive NMR samples are presented. These results affect the expressions for the signal-to-noise of NMR on conductive samples when the skin depth of RF penetration is not large compared to the sample size. The exact solution presented here of a circular surface coil adjacent to a spherical conductive sample demonstrates the effect of eddy current shielding of RF fields produced by non-homogeneous coils. Specific results are presented for various surface coils adjacent to a spherical sample at 10 and 150 MHz. Beyond a frequency-dependent depth, the signal-to-noise of different surface coils is shown to be nearly identical.