Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 2, 2025

Coulomb Explosion Imaging as a Tool to Distinguish Between Stereoisomers
Published on: August 18, 2017
Vibrational Circular Dichroism Spectroscopy of Chiral Molecular Crystals: Insights from Theory
1PASTEUR, Département de Chimie, Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL University, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, 75005, Paris, France.
Abstract:
Chirality is a curious phenomenon that appears in various forms. While the concept of molecular (RS-)chirality is ubiquitous in chemistry, there are also more intricate forms of structural chirality. One of them is the enantiomorphism of crystals, especially molecular crystals, that describes the lack of mirror symmetry in the unit cell. Its relation to molecular chirality is not obvious, but still an open question, which can be addressed with chiroptical tools. Vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) denotes chiral infrared (IR) spectroscopy that is susceptible to both, the molecular as well as the intermolecular space by means of vibrational transitions. When carried out in the solid state, VCD delivers a very rich set of non-local contributions that are determined by crystal packing and collective motion. Since its discovery in the 1970s, VCD has become the method of choice for the determination of absolute configurations, but its applicability reaches beyond towards the study of different crystal forms and polymorphism. This brief review summarises the theoretical concepts of crystal chirality and how computations of solid-state VCD can shed light into the intimate connection of chiral structure and vibrational optical activity.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Chirality
Chiral objects exhibit a sense of handedness when they interact with another chiral object. For example, our left foot can only fit in the left shoe and not in the right shoe. Achiral objects — objects that have...
Chirality in Nature
Molecules with Multiple Chiral Centers
Stereoisomerism of Cyclic Compounds
Properties of Enantiomers and Optical Activity
Prochirality

