Vibrational Raman Optical Activity Comes of Age

Abstract

It is almost precisely 20 years since the first recording of an entire vibrational Raman optical activity (VROA) spectrum was accomplished. We describe some of the developments which by now have allowed the measurement of carbohydrates, peptides and even proteins, and nucleic acids. While we outline the enormous general potential of VROA for structural determinations of chiral molecules, our emphasis is on the particular potential the separate determination of the isotropic and anisotropic invariants of the optical activity scattering tensor has for the interpretation of VROA data.