Billion-fold enhancement in sensitivity of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for magnesium ions in solution

β-nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is highly sensitive compared to conventional NMR spectroscopy, and may be applied for several elements across the periodic table. β-NMR has previously been successfully applied in the fields of nuclear and solid-state physics. In this work, β-NMR is applied, for the first time, to record an NMR spectrum for a species in solution. (31)Mg β-NMR spectra are measured for as few as 10(7) magnesium ions in ionic liquid (EMIM-Ac) within minutes, as a prototypical test case. Resonances are observed at 3882.9 and 3887.2 kHz in an external field of 0.3 T. The key achievement of the current work is to demonstrate that β-NMR is applicable for the analysis of species in solution, and thus represents a novel spectroscopic technique for use in general chemistry and potentially in biochemistry.