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Published on: February 10, 2020
Determination of the absolute stereochemistry of limonene and alpha-santalol by Raman optical activity spectroscopy
Akira Sakamoto1, Nao Ohya, Toshio Hasegawa
1Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Saitama University, 255 Shimo-Ohkubo, Sakura-ku, Saitama, Saitama 338-8570, Japan. sakamoto@chem.saitama-u.ac.jp
Abstract:
Determining the absolute stereochemistry of organic compounds in solution remains a challenge. We investigated the use of Raman optical activity (ROA) spectroscopy to address this problem. The absolute configurations of (+)-(R)- and (-)-(S)-limonene were determined by ROA spectroscopy, which can be applied to smaller amounts of sample as compared with vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) spectroscopy. This ROA method was also applied to (+)-(E)-alpha-santalol and shown to be successful in the determination of the absolute configuration of this compound. ROA spectroscopy shows promise as a useful tool for determining the absolute stereochemistry of many natural compounds.
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