| Abstract: | A simple incident circular polarization Raman optical activity (ICP ROA) spectrometer was constructed by applying the method of circularity conversion. The circular polarization of the incident laser light was modulated between right and left by the insertion of a half‐wave plate and not by using a Pockels cell which is usually used in ICP ROA instruments. On the basis of the concept of the virtual enantiomer (Hug, W. Applied Spectroscopy, 2003, 57, 1), circularity converters were inserted in the optical train, which could effectively compensate the systematic offset. The new instrument successfully attained photon shot‐noise‐limited conditions for all bands except for the very strongly polarized Raman band. The ROA spectra of some standard chiral samples were measured to demonstrate the performance of the spectrometer. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
