COSY- 90 vs COSY- 45

Aside from the standard ¹H and ¹³C NMR 1D experiments, ¹H COSY experiments are among the most commonly used NMR techniques by organic chemists. There are many different modifications to the standard two pulse COSY experiment and often the organic chemist does not even know which one they are using. Two of the most common experiments for routine work are the gradient magnitude COSY- 90 and COSY- 45 experiments. The only difference between the two methods is the flip angle of the second pulse (90 degrees for the COSY- 90 and 45 degrees for the COSY- 45). For a concentrated sample, these experiments can be acquired in a matter of minutes. Although the signal to noise ratio is higher for a COSY- 90, the COSY- 45 is usually the preferred experiment because the diagonal signals are smaller and less intense allowing correlations between close resonances to be resolved more easily. The figure below shows magnitude gradient COSY- 90 and COSY- 45 spectra for 3-heptanone. Note the smaller diagonal responses in the COSY- 45.