Detection and analysis of molecular chirality plays a crucial role in chemistry, biochemistry and material science.  Also, enantiomeric purity is equally important as chemical purity for the efficacy of pharmaceutical active ingredients.  The optical purity of chiral catalysts and the resulting enantiomeric excess measurements is necessary to evaluate synthetic transformations.  More recently materials including polymers as well as supramolecular assemblies and switches employing chiral elements have given rise to differential behavior with matter and energy.  Chiral information of macromolecules such as discrete proteins, DNA, RNA, polysaccharides and complexes of these biomolecules are important to gain insight into their three-dimensional structural features, most notably their helicity.  Traditional methods of chiral analysis include optical rotation (OR) and optical rotary dispersion (ORD).  In this talk the limitation of existing methods will be discussed.  We shall then describe label-free and dilution-free detection of chirality of molecules by terahertz absorbance spectroscopy.

Label-free and neat detection of molecular chirality by terahertz spectrometry

242nd National Meeting (2011)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.