Simple liquid-core waveguide polarimetry

A simple, low cost, liquid-core waveguide polarimeter is presented. The rotation of polarized light was measured after passing through a hollow fiber containing the chiral solution of interest. Sensitivity was found to scale with fiber length. For compactness, the fiber can be curled into a right-angle figure 8 configuration and this eliminated any phase effects that would otherwise be introduced. The limit of detection was 0.3 mM for both (S)-(-)-limonene and (R)-(+)-limonene using a 220.8 cm long fiber with a run time of approximately 30 s and a core volume of 38.9 mu l. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.