From Ultraslow to Extremely Fast Dynamics in Sodium Nitrate: an 17O NMR Study

Increasing dynamics in solids featuring nuclei subjected to second-order quadrupolar interactions lead to central-transition spectra that undergo two consecutive line-shaped transitions. Conventional motional narrowing occurs when the molecular exchange rate is on the order of the strength of the dominant interaction. In a second step, the resulting intermediately narrowed spectra change further when the motion becomes faster than the Larmor precession rate, leading to terminally narrowed spectra that can display a residual quadrupolar shift. We derive analytic expressions for this shift and analyze the quadrupolar central-transition spectra in terms of CN symmetrical cone models. Increasing the number of sites to N ≥ 3, the terminally narrowed spectra remain unaltered, while the intermediately narrowed spectra remain unaltered only for N ≥ 5. This finding relates to the different (cubic vs. icosahedral) symmetries that are required to average out the spatial second- and fourth-rank terms in the second-order quadrupolar interaction. Following recent work (Hung et al., Solid State Nucl Magn Reson 84:14–19, 2017), 17O NMR is applied to examine the three-site rotation of the nitrate group in NaNO3. Line shapes are measured and analyzed, and in addition to prior work, satellite-transition and stimulated-echo experiments are carried out. The final-state amplitudes extracted from the latter are reproduced using model calculations. It is shown how two-dimensional exchange spectra relating to N-site cone motions can be decomposed in terms of effective two-site-jump spectra. This latter approach is successfully tested for NaNO3.