Prof. Dr. Christian Merten

The research group led by Prof Merten deals with stereochemistry and chiroptical spectroscopy. The main experimental tool is vibrational circular dichroism spectroscopy (VCD), which is used to study a variety of phenomena related to molecular chirality, such as the mechanisms of transfer of chirality or stereochemical information in systems relevant to asymmetric catalysis and chiral recognition or fundamental questions about solutes, solvents and other intermolecular interactions. There is also interest in the development of novel sampling techniques, such as matrix isolation VCD for the characterisation of photochemically generated chiral species or cryo-solution VCD for chiroptical studies of weak interactions in liquid noble gases.