Paving the Way Towards a Compact Complete Chiroptical Toolbox
- 1Department of Chemistry, Durham University, South Road, UK
Abstract
Circularly polarised luminescence (CPL) spectroscopy is a technique with applications in materials chemistry, bioimaging, probing fundamental chirality, but conventional photo-elastic modulator CPL instruments remain bulky, expensive and slow. We report a compact single-channel CPL (SC-CPL) spectrometer that alternates left-and righthanded emission through a piezo-actuated pair of orthogonally aligned achromatic quarter-wave plates using a rapid CCD detector. This design minimises moving optics and eliminates the need for detector matching and pre-calibration. It can operate in various acquisition modes such as time gated acquisition mode for long-lived CPL emission and a quasi-continuous mode for short-lived CPL emission. Validation against a benchmark PEM-CPL system using a range of CPL emitters reproduced fine CPL resolution with high sensitivity, orders of magnitude faster. This blueprint SC-CPL reported herein paves the way towards the world's first complete compact chiroptical toolbox. This could lead to significant advancements with pivotal scientific and societal impact.
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BibTeX
@misc{black2026paving,
title = {{Paving the Way Towards a Compact Complete Chiroptical Toolbox}},
author = {Dominic J Black and Artemijs Krimovs and Robert Pal},
howpublished = {ChemRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.26434/chemrxiv.10001935/v2},
url = {https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.10001935/v2},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Paving the Way Towards a Compact Complete Chiroptical Toolbox
AU - Dominic J Black
AU - Artemijs Krimovs
AU - Robert Pal
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/09
PB - ChemRxiv
DO - 10.26434/chemrxiv.10001935/v2
UR - https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.10001935/v2
AB - Circularly polarised luminescence (CPL) spectroscopy is a technique with applications in materials chemistry, bioimaging, probing fundamental chirality, but conventional photo-elastic modulator CPL instruments remain bulky, expensive and slow. We report a compact single-channel CPL (SC-CPL) spectrometer that alternates left-and righthanded emission through a piezo-actuated pair of orthogonally aligned achromatic quarter-wave plates using a rapid CCD detector. This design minimises moving optics and eliminates the need for detector matching and pre-calibration. It can operate in various acquisition modes such as time gated acquisition mode for long-lived CPL emission and a quasi-continuous mode for short-lived CPL emission. Validation against a benchmark PEM-CPL system using a range of CPL emitters reproduced fine CPL resolution with high sensitivity, orders of magnitude faster. This blueprint SC-CPL reported herein paves the way towards the world's first complete compact chiroptical toolbox. This could lead to significant advancements with pivotal scientific and societal impact.
ER -