A semiconductor device whose RF resistance varies in proportion to an applied DC bias current. PIN diodes are essential elements for rapid switching of RF coils between transmit and receive modes and for coil decoupling.

1) The specific irradiation designed to remove the multiple structure in a particular resonance due to spin spin coupling with other nuclei;
2) The preventing of the interaction by mutual inductive coupling of two (or more) resonant RF coils, e.g. by detuning coils not in use at a particular point in time. Decoupling can take the form of active decoupling where an externally controlled switching circuit is used to detune the non-selected coils or passive decoupling where RF energy from the transmitter pulse is used to switch diodes to detune the appropriate coil.