A novel Raman optical activity instrument operating in the deep ultraviolet spectral region

Raman optical activity (ROA) has been exclusively observed in the visible (VIS) and near-infrared (NIR) spectral regions to date. During the last few years, we have designed, constructed and tested the first ROA instrument, operating in the deep-ultraviolet (DUV) spectral region employing 244-nm excitation. This novel DUV ROA instrument is based on a backscattering geometry and incident circular polarization modulation (ICP); it makes use of a fast DUV imaging lens-based spectrograph and specially designed DUV grade polarization optics. The performance of this instrument has been evaluated by analysing measured non-resonant DUV ROA spectra of non-absorbing enantiomeric liquid samples and by comparing these with corresponding ROA spectra recorded in the visible spectral region. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.