A review of the application of chiroptical methods to analytical chemistry

The analytical applications of the two most important chiroptical methods, optical rotatory dispersions (ORD) and circular dichroism (CD), have been surveyed, emphasizing the methods corresponding to the profile of the Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis. After a brief introduction of the ORD and CD methods, the advantages and drawbacks of the application of the two methods have been described, and compared, and the calibration of ORD and CD instruments have been given. The analytical applications have been divided as follows: the use of ORD and CD in identification studies, the direct determination of optically active substances, the determination of optically active compounds after chromophore group formation, determination of optically inactive substances via their products with optically active compounds. The difference chiroptical methods increasing the selectivity of measurements and the chiroptical titrations have been summarized. Stress has been laid on the applicability of selective chiroptical detectors (based on laser light, too) used in liquid chromatography and the future developments have been mentioned.