Analytical chiral purity verification using Raman optical activity

Current chiral analytical spectroscopic techniques are limited, either in their inability to perform multicomponent analyses or in their need to undergo tedious sample preparation. Vibrational optical activity (VOA) techniques show promise in overcoming current restrictions. The plethora of vibrational bands allows multicomponent analysis, and sample preparation is minimal. Previous analytical evaluation of VOA techniques has been limited. In this paper, a thorough evaluation of Raman optical activity (ROA) reproducibility has been performed to demonstrate that ROA can uniquely identify 100:0% and 99:1% enantiomeric mixtures. Spectra of compounds of industrial and pharmaceutical relevance are also presented.