QR Technology

Closely related to Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

Capable of unambiguously identifying a wide range of chemical compounds

Broad range of applications including explosives, narcotics and biochemical detection

Technology

What is Quadrupole Resonance?

Quadrupole Resonance (QR) technology is closely related to Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), which is widely deployed in the medical profession.

QR technology has a broad range of applications including explosives, narcotics and biochemical detection as well as pharmaceutical quality control and assurance, mineral and material assay, lab instrumentation and other environmental science applications.

QR technology is capable of unambiguously identifying a wide range of chemical compounds. It uses radio waves to stimulate certain atoms such as nitrogen, which is ubiquitous in explosives. The wavelength spectrum of the energy re-emitted by the excited atoms can then be used to identify the molecule.

Approximately 10,000 different chemical substances have been detected by QR worldwide.

QR is a radio-frequency (RF) spectroscopy, defined as a phenomenon of resonance RF absorption or emission of electromagnetic energy. The phenomenon is due to interactions between asymmetrically distributed charges of the atomic nucleus, or quadrupole moment, and the atomic shell electrons, as well as those charges that are outside the atomic radius. Therefore, all changes in the quadrupole coupling are constants and QR frequencies are due to their electric origin.

A magnetic field is not required in QR because the electric quadrupole moments of the nuclei are already aligned by the electric field gradients of the surrounding molecules. The process of aligning the electric quadrupole moments of the nuclei also aligns their magnetic moments. The requirements in MRI for a large uniform magnetic field make the apparatus bulky and expensive. The QR technique is, in principal, much simpler and extremely sensitive to the structure of the molecule. The size and frequency of the signals in both techniques are related to the strength of the aligning field; this may be increased in MRI by using a bigger magnet. The size and frequency of the QR signals are fixed due to a physical characteristic of the material under examination.

In general, signal strength and operating frequency are lower in QR. Operating at lower frequencies has the benefits of deeper penetration, however, require a detection system of greater sensitivity. QRSciences QR research has been focused on creating this system and considerable progress has already been made, with commercial applications now a reality.

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