2023/01/01 by Corentin Grassin, Corina H. Pollok, Nora M. Kreienborg +1 · 1 voice
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Molecular spectroscopy and chirality #Protein Structure and Dynamics #Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Studies
paper · doi:10.1039/d3cp05023h
openalex publication_date 2023/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/02
Combining vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) spectroscopy with the matrix isolation (MI) technique opens up interesting possibilities to study chiral molecules. MI involves the isolation of guest species in inert solid matrices at cryogenic temperatures. Hence, MI-VCD measures are solid-state VCD measurements, and as such, can suffer from mostly birefringance-related artefacts in the same way as common solid-state VCD measurements. In this contribution, we demonstrate that the sample preparation condition have tremendous impact on the quality and reliability of the recorded MI-VCD spectra. While MI-IR spectra are basically blind to these artefacts, the variation of deposition temperatures and host flow rates seem to control whether high quality MI-VCD spectra are obtained or if depolarization effects lead to completely obscured spectra. For two selected examples, styrene oxide (SO) and 1-phenyl propylene oxide (PPO), we discuss how the various experimental conditions may lead to the aforementioned effects and give a microscopic description of their origin.