Vibrational Optical Activity

Abstract

Vibrational optical activity (VOA) is no longer a curious novelty in the field of molecular spectroscopy. After recently celebrating twenty years of development since its early years of discovery, VOA has matured to a point where the phenomenon is well understood theoretically, can be measured and calculated routinely, and is being used to uncover exciting new information about the structure of optically active molecules. Beyond this, VOA has been shown to be a sensitive, noninvasive diagnostic probe of chiral purity or enantiomefic separation with potential use in the synthesis and manufacture of chiral drugs and pharmaceutical products.