New Design for Fourier Transform Infrared Vibrational Circular Dichroism Spectrometers

Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectrometers are commonly designed with small-area detectors and tight focusing mirrors. Vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) measurements made with such FT-IR instruments contain polarization artifacts, and VCD measurements on both enantiomers (or one enantiomer and racemic mixture) are required in order to reduce these artifacts. This restriction limits the VCD measurements to only those samples for which both enantiomers (or one enantiomer and racemic mixture) are available. Recently a modified design was reported in the literature where the mirrors between sample and detector were replaced with a BaF2 lens, and a larger-area detector was substituted for the smaller-area counterpart. These modifications successfully alleviated some of the artifact problems. This design, however, is not suitable for polarizing interferometers, where polarizations exiting the interferometer are to be preserved to a high degree of purity. In addition, it is not clear whether the throughput enhancement advantage realized with a larger-area detector completely offsets the disadvantage from increased noise with detector area. Furthermore, BaF2 lenses reduce the broad range routinely available on an FT-IR instrument. Here we report a new design that replaces all the mirrors at the exit port of the interferometer with two KBr lenses and retains the full spectral range (4000-400 cm-1) of mid-infrared FT-IR spectrometers. VCD measurements obtained with small- (1 × 1 mm) and large- (4 × 4 mm) area detectors are found to have similar signal quality.