ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of optical activity gave a great impetus to the establishment of modern stereochemistry, but it is based on the liquid state, rather than on solid-state experiments. This chapter describes the unique features and the theory of solid-state optical activity, and the instrumentation of the UCS: J-800KCM. Solid-state circular dichroism (CD) can provide information on solute-solvent interactions when compared with the solution spectra in various solvents. Generally, substantial artifacts accompany solid state CD, and hence the measurement of solid-state chiroptical properties using a commercially available CD spectrophotometer has to be carried out with extreme care. Solidstate CD can offer valuable information about the supramolecular nature of compounds and solid-state reactions, but it must be kept in mind that these suffer from substantial macroscopic anisotropies. The chapter shows that CD measurements in the solid state must be accompanied by measurement of corresponding Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) and Linear dichroism (LD) to evaluate the magnitudes of macroscopic anisotropies.
