Powder material works best. Other materials need cut to size (3 mm widths for 4 mm probes, 1 mm for 2.5 mm probe).

Samples are placed in an external magnetic field and bombarded with RF energy. This causes magnetic moments to excite and align against the external field. Emission of the absorbed resonant frequency gives characteristic spectra used for interpretation of chemical structure.

Solid state NMR is used for determining the average structure of an ensemble of molecules. Lines are typically broader than in solution state, though chemical shift information is the same. Solid state NMR is typically only used for identification of analytes and not quantitative. This type of NMR can detect ppm levels of nuclei in a sample.