Circular Dichroism Spectrometers

July 28, 2017

Title

Circular Dichroism Spectrometers

Author

G.E. Tranter

Year

2016

Journal

Reference Module in Chemistry, Molecular Sciences and Chemical Engineering

Abstract

Circular Dichroism (CD) is the differential absorption of left and right circularly polarised light by a chiral substance. The phenomenon can occur for all wavelengths of light and results in “vibrational” CD (VCD) in the infra-red region and “electronic” CD (ECD) in the ultra violet and visible regions, corresponding to the different excitations induced in a molecule by the light; “Raman Optical Activity” (ROA) is the analogous phenomenon for Raman scattering. The VCD and ROA techniques are described elsewhere in this work, the section here concentrates on the instrumentation for ECD. The basis of CD, the main features of ECD spectrometers and optimal methodology for obtaining spectra are described.

Keywords

Circular dichroism,