Recent developments in Raman optical activity instrumentation

Abstract

We describe the latest versions of two current multichannel Raman optical activity (ROA) instruments from our laboratory. Both are based on an astigmatic spectrograph equipped with a holographic notch filter and a charge-coupled device detector and employ the incident circular polarization (ICP) modulation strategy for ROA measurements, one in backscattering and the other in right-angle scattering. A selection of ROA spectra is presented which demonstrates the excellent performance characteristics of both instruments, especially in the lower wavenumber region. We also discuss the design for a future ICP instrument for backscattering ROA measurements which uses state-of-the-art stigmatic spectrograph technology and which is currently under construction in our laboratory.