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Updated: Sep 2, 2025

Interfacial Molecular-level Structures of Polymers and Biomacromolecules Revealed via Sum Frequency Generation Vibrational Spectroscopy
Published on: August 13, 2019
Vibrational Circular Dichroism Unravels Supramolecular Chirality and Hydration Polymorphism of Nucleoside Crystals
Monika Krupová1,2, Patrycja Leszczenko1,3, Ewa Sierka1,3
1Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, Czech Academy of Sciences, Flemingovo náměstí 2, 16610, Prague, Czech Republic.
Abstract:
Vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) spectroscopy has been widely used to study (bio)molecules in solution. However, its solid-state applications have been restricted due to experimental limitations and artifacts. Having overcome some of them, the first VCD study of nucleoside crystals is now presented. A two-orders-of-magnitude enhancement of VCD signal was observed due to high molecular order in the crystals and resulting supramolecular chirality. This allowed to obtain high-quality VCD spectra within minutes using minute amounts of samples. The VCD technique is extremely sensitive in detecting changes in a crystal order and is able to distinguish different hydration states of crystals. This elevates it to a new level, as a fast and efficient tool to study chiral crystalline samples. This study demonstrates that VCD is capable of near-instantaneous detection of hydration polymorphs and crystal degradation, which is of substantial interest in pharmaceutical industry (quality and stability control).
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