Determination of the shape and dimensions of the polymer molecules in solutions using diffusional NMR relaxation

A new method of determining the dimensions and shapes of polymer molecules in solutions is proposed and verified in experiments. The method is based on the measurements of the relaxation of the transverse magnetization intensity of nuclei. It is established that the decaying signal of the spin echo from elongated molecules contains two terms exponentially decaying with time, which correspond to two diffusion coefficients differing by a factor of about two. The signal from molecules with a near-spherical shape contain only one exponent.