VCD Spectroscopy for Organic Chemists

Stimulated by the increasing importance of chiral molecules as pharmaceuticals and the need for enantiomerically pure drugs, techniques in chiral chemistry have been expanded and refined, especially in the areas of chromatography, asymmetric synthesis, and spectroscopic methods for chiral molecule structural characterization. In addition to synthetic chiral molecules, naturally occurring molecules, which are invariably chiral and generally enantiomerically enriched, are of potential interest as leads for new drugs.

VCD Spectroscopy for Organic Chemists discusses the applications of vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) spectroscopy to the structural characterization of chiral organic molecules. The book provides all of the information about VCD spectroscopy that an organic chemist needs in order to make use of the technique. The authors, experts responsible for much of the existing literature in this field, discuss the experimental measurement of VCD and the theoretical prediction of VCD. In addition, they evaluate the advantages and limitations of the technique in determining molecular structure.

Given the availability of commercial VCD instrumentation and quantum chemistry software, it became possible in the late 1990s for chemists to use VCD in elucidating the stereochemistries of chiral organic molecules. This book helps organic chemists become more aware of the utility of VCD spectroscopy and provides them with sufficient knowledge to incorporate the technique into their own research.

Philip John Stephens and Frank J. Devlin are with the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. James R. Cheeseman works with Gaussian, Inc. in Wallingford, Connecticut.