With support from the Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Program, Torsten Fiebig in the Department of Chemistry at Boston College will develop a femtosecond circular dichroism spectrometer for research and education. Currently, commercial circular dichroism spectrometers are only available for steady state operations. However, monitoring the real-time change of a circular dichroism spectrum provides both structural and dynamical information about molecular systems. Up to now laboratory-stage experimental setups for time resolved CD measurements were designed to monitor dynamics in the time range of millisecond to picoseconds. Earlier attempts to measure ultrafast time-resolved CD spectra (on the picosecond time scale) utilized tunable laser pulses combined with single-wavelength detection schemes. Thus instead of measuring the entire CD spectrum simultaneously it had to be reconstructed point by point which exacerbates the data acquisition and data analysis procedure significantly. Prof. Fiebig will design and construct a broadband femtosecond time-resolved circular dichroism spectrometer with the capability of simultaneously acquiring data over a large spectral region (ultraviolet to near infrared).
This instrument will be a very powerful tool in studies of protein folding and molecular recognition.
