Raman optical activity

Raman optical activity can be observed in a number of forms, depending on the polarization of the incident and the scattered light.

Due to its sensitivity to chirality, Raman optical activity is a useful probe of biomolecular structure and behaviour in aqueous solution.

Raman optical activity spectroscopy is related to Raman spectroscopy and circular dichroism.

A simple introduction to Raman optical activity instruments can be found on Laurence Barron's site [1].

Raman optical activity (ROA)

Raman optical activity spectroscopy exploits Raman scattering and optical activity effects to reveal detailed information on chiral centers in molecules.

Barron is best known for his pioneering work on Raman optical activity, and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society on the 26th of May 2005.

Raman optical activity (ROA) is a vibrational spectroscopic technique that is reliant on the difference in intensity of Raman scattered right and left circularly polarised light due to molecular chirality.

In 1971 Buckingham and Laurence Barron pioneered the study of Raman optical activity, due to differences in the Raman scattering of left and right-polarized light by chiral molecules.

Though the method does not reveal information to the atomic resolution of crystallographic approaches, it is able to examine structure and behaviour in biologically more realistic conditions (compare the dynamic solution structure examined by Raman optical activity to the static crystal structure).

More developments, including important contributions to the development of practical Raman optical activity instruments, were made by Werner Hug of the University of Friburg, and Lutz Hecht with Laurence Barron at the University of Glasgow.

The basic principle of Raman optical activity is that there is interference between light waves scattered by the polarizability and optical activity tensors of a chiral molecule, which leads to a difference between the intensities of the right- and left-handed circularly polarised scattered beams.