Vibrational Circular Dichroism: A New Tool for the Solution-State Determination of the Structure and Absolute Configuration of Chiral Natural Product Molecules

Vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) has been used in recent years to determine the absolute configuration of a number of natural product chiral molecules. In this brief review, these applications will be described and the methodology of VCD determination of absolute configuration (AC) will be explained. The principal advantages of VCD versus X-ray crystallography for absolute configuration determination are: 1) only solution-state samples are needed and therefore single crystals are not required, 2) high enantiomeric sample purity is not required, 3) high chemical purity is not required as long as impurities are not chiral and 4) solution-state conformations are obtained as an extra feature of the AC determination.