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Resonance Raman optical activity (RROA) spectra with high sensitivity reveal details on molecular structure, chirality, and excited electronic properties. Despite the difficulty of the measurements, the recorded data for the Co(III) complex with S,S‐N,N‐ethylenediaminedisuccinic acid are of exceptional quality and, coupled with the theory, spectacularly document the molecular behavior in resonance. This includes a huge enhancement of the chiral scattering, contribution of the antisymmetric polarizabilities to the signal, and the Herzberg‐Teller effect significantly shaping the spectra. The chiral component is by about one order of magnitude bigger than for an analogous aluminum complex. The band assignment and intensity profile were confirmed by simulations based on density functional and vibronic theories. The resonance was attributed to the S0→S3 transition, with the strongest signal enhancement of Raman and ROA spectral bands below about 800 cm−1. For higher wavenumbers, other excited electronic states contribute to the scattering in a less resonant way. RROA spectroscopy thus appears as a unique tool to study the structure and electronic states of absorbing molecules in analytical chemistry, biology, and material science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article in ChemPlusChem discusses the use of Raman optical activity spectra to monitor the conformation and protonation states of glutathione. By combining this technique with density functional theory and molecular dynamics computations, researchers can deduce potential energy maps from the spectra. These maps can be used to verify or improve common force fields. The study found that the pH had a limited effect on the backbone conformation of glutathione. The full details of the research can be found in the article by Petr Bouř and his colleagues. [Extracted from the article]

Resonance Raman optical activity (RROA) spectra with high sensitivity reveal details on molecular structure, chirality, and excited electronic properties. Despite the difficulty of the measurements, the recorded data for the Co(III) complex with S,S-N,N-ethylenediaminedisuccinic acid are of exceptional quality and, coupled with the theory, spectacularly document the molecular behavior in resonance. This includes a huge enhancement of the chiral scattering, contribution of the antisymmetric polarizabilities to the signal, and the Herzberg-Teller effect significantly shaping the spectra. The chiral component is by about one order of magnitude bigger than for an analogous aluminum complex. The band assignment and intensity profile were confirmed by simulations based on density functional and vibronic theories. The resonance was attributed to the S 0 →S 3 transition, with the strongest signal enhancement of Raman and ROA spectral bands below about 800 cm -1 . For higher wavenumbers, other excited electronic states contribute to the scattering in a less resonant way. RROA spectroscopy thus appears as a unique tool to study the structure and electronic states of absorbing molecules in analytical chemistry, biology, and material science., (© 2023 The Authors. Angewandte Chemie International Edition published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

The histidine residue has an exceptional affinity for metals, but solution structure of its complexes are difficult to study. For zinc and nickel complexes, Raman and Raman optical activity (ROA) spectroscopy methods to investigate the link between spectral shapes and the geometry were used. The spectra were recorded and interpreted on the basis of ionic equilibria, molecular dynamics, ab initio molecular dynamics, and density functional theory. For zwitterionic histidine the dominant tautomer was determined by the decomposition of experimental spectra into calculated subspectra. An octahedral structure was found to prevail for the ZnHis 2 complex in solution, in contrast to a tetrahedral arrangement in the crystal phase. The solution geometry of NiHis 2 is more similar to the octahedral structure found by X-ray. The Raman and ROA structural determinations of metal complexes are dependent on extensive computations, but reveal unique information about the studied systems., (© 2022 Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

Lanthanide complexes are used as convenient spectroscopic probes for many biomolecules. Their binding to proteins is believed to be enhanced by the presence of histidine, but the strength of the interaction significantly varies across different systems. To understand the role of peptide length and sequence, short histidine-containing peptides have been synthesized (His-Gly, His-Gly-Gly, His-Gly-Gly-Gly, Gly-His, Gly-His-Gly, His-His, and Gly-Gly-His) and circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) induced at the [Eu(dpa) 3 ] 3- complex has been measured by means of a Raman optical activity (ROA) spectrometer. The obtained data indicate relatively weak binding of the histidine residue to the complex, with a strong participation of other parts of the peptide. Longer peptides, low pH, and a histidine residue close to the N-peptide terminus favor the binding. The binding strengths are approximately proportional to the CPL intensity and roughly correlate with predictions based on molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The specificity of lanthanide binding to the peptide structure and its intense luminescence and high optical activity make the ROA/CPL technique suitable for probing secondary and tertiary structures of peptides and proteins., (© 2018 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

The geometry and the electronic structure of chiral lanthanide(III) complexes are traditionally probed by electronic methods, such as circularly polarised luminescence (CPL) and electronic circular dichroism (ECD) spectroscopy. The vibrational phenomena are much weaker. In the present study, however, significant enhancements of vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) and Raman optical activity (ROA) spectral intensities were observed during the formation of a chiral bipyridine-Eu(III) complex. The ten-fold enhancement of the vibrational absorption and VCD intensities was explained by a charge-transfer process and the dominant effect of the nitrate ion on the spectra. A much larger enhancement of the ROA and Raman intensities and a hundred-fold increase of the circular intensity difference (CID) ratio were explained by the resonance of the λ = 532 nm laser light with the (7)F0 → (5)D0 transitions. This phenomenon is combined with a chirality transfer, and mixing of the Raman and luminescence effects involving low-energy (7)F states of europium. The results thus indicate that the vibrational optical activity (VOA) may be a very sensitive tool for chirality detection and probing of the electronic structure of Eu(III) and other coordination compounds., (© 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

Vibrational properties of solutions are frequently simulated with clusters of a solute and a few solvent molecules obtained during molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The raw cluster geometries, however, often provide unrealistic vibrational band broadening, for both ab initio and empirical force fields. In this work, partial optimization in normal-mode coordinates is used on empirical basis to reduce the broadening. The origin of the error is discussed on a simplified two-dimensional system, which indicates that the problem is caused by the anharmonic MD potential, mode coupling, and neglect of quantum effects. Then the procedure of partial geometry optimization on Raman and Raman optical activity (ROA) spectra is applied and analyzed for the solvated lactamide molecule. Comparison to experiment demonstrates that the normal-mode partial optimization technique with a suitable frequency limit can significantly reduce the broadening error. For lactamide, experimental and simulated vibrational bandwidths are compared; the most realistic theoretical spectra are obtained for partially optimized clusters with the vibrational wavenumber cutoff of about 200 cm(-1).