SGER: Surface Enhanced Raman Optical Activity

Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston MA

Investigators

Abstract

In this Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) funded by the Analytical and Surface Chemistry (ASC) program of the Chemistry Division Prof. Kneipp of Massachusetts General Hospital and co-workers will develop a new analytical technique to measure optical activity of chiral compounds. Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) will be used to measure the optical activity of chiral compounds when adsorbed to silver or gold nanoparticles. The hypothesis to be tested is that Raman optical activity signals of chiral compounds will be amplified by up to five orders of magnitude when adsorbed to silver or gold nanoparticles due to interactions between the chiral compounds and the local electromagnetic field produced near the surface of the particles when irradiated. The study is classified as high risk since it is possible that other factors will overwhelm the enhancement of the optical activity signals due to the localized electromagnetic field. If successful the study could potentially revolutionize the field of drug testing in the pharmaceutical industry since the new method for surface enhanced Raman optical activity (SEROA) measurements will show significantly higher sensitivity compared to state-of-the-art techniques currently used for optical activity measurements of chiral compounds.