The infrared vibrational absorption (VA) and vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) spectra of methyl lactate were measured in the 1000–1800 cm⁻¹ region in the CCl₄ and H₂O solvents, respectively. In particular, the chirality transfer effect, i.e. the H–O–H bending bands of the achiral water subunits that are hydrogen-bonded to the methyl lactate molecule exhibit substantial VCD strength, was detected experimentally. A series of density functional theory calculations using B3PW91 and B3LYP functionals with 6-311++G(d,p) and aug-cc-pVTZ basis sets were carried out to simulate the VA and VCD spectra of the methyl lactate monomer and the methyl lactate–(H₂O)_n complexes with n = 1, 2, 3. The population weighted VA and VCD spectra of the methyl lactate monomer are in good agreement with the experimental spectra in CCl₄ . Implicit polarizable continuum model was found to be inadequate to account for the hydrogen-bonding effect in the observed VA and VCD spectra in H₂O. The methyl lactate–(H₂O)_n complexes with n = 1, 2, 3 were used to model the explicit hydrogen-bonding. The population weighted VA and VCD spectra of the methyl lactate–H₂O binary complex are shown to capture the main spectral features in the observed spectra in aqueous solution. The theoretical modeling shows that the extent of chirality transfer depends sensitively on the specific binding sites taken by the achiral water molecules. The observation of chirality transfer effect opens a new spectral window to detect and to model the hydrogen-bonding solvent effect on VCD spectra of chiral molecules.

Vibrational optical activity spectroscopies, namely vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) and Raman optical activity (ROA), have been emerged in the past decade as a powerful spectroscopic tool for stereochemical information of a wide range of chiral compounds in solution directly. More recently, their applications in unveiling solvent effects, especially those associated with water solvent, have been explored. In this review article, we first select a few examples to demonstrate the unique sensitivity of VCD spectral signatures to both bulk solvent effects and explicit hydrogen-bonding interactions in solution. Second, we discuss the induced solvent chirality, or chiral transfer, VCD spectral features observed at the water bending band region in detail. From these chirality transfer spectral data, the related conformer specific gas phase spectroscopic studies of small chiral hydration clusters, and the associated matrix isolation VCD experiments of hydrogen-bonded complexes in cold rare gas matrices, a general picture of solvation in aqueous solution emerges. In such an aqueous solution, some small chiral hydration clusters, rather than the chiral solutes themselves, are the dominant species and are the ones who contribute mainly to the experimentally observed VCD features. We then review a series of VCD studies of amino acids and their derivatives in aqueous solution under different pHs to emphasize the importance of the inclusion of the bulk solvent effects. These experimental data and the associated theoretical analyses are the foundation for the proposed “clusters-in-a-liquid” approach to account for solvent effects effectively. We present several approaches to identify and build such representative chiral hydration clusters. Recent studies which applied molecular dynamics simulations and the subsequent snapshot averaging approach to generate the ROA, electronic CD, and optical rotatory dispersion spectra are also reviewed. Challenges associated with the molecular dynamics snapshot approach are discussed and the successes of the seemingly random “ad hoc explicit solvation” reported before are also explained. To further test and improve the “clusters-in-a-liquid” model in practice, future work in terms of conformer specific gas phase spectroscopy of sequential solvation of a chiral solute, matrix isolation VCD measurements of small chiral hydration clusters, and more sophisticated models for the bulk solvent effects would

The three-dimensional structure of a peptide is strongly influenced by its solvent environment. In the present study, we study three cyclic tetrapeptides which serve as model peptides for β-turns. They are of the general structure cyclo(Boc-Cys-Pro-X-Cys-OMe) with the amino acid X being either glycine (1), or L- or D-leucine (L- or D-2). Using vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) spectroscopy, we confirm previous NMR results which showed that D-2 adopts predominantly a β_II turn structure in apolar and polar solvents. Our results for L-2 indicate a preference for a β_I structure over β_II. With increasing solvent polarity, the preference for 1 is shifted from β_II towards β_I. This conformational change goes along with the breaking of an intramolecular hydrogen bond which stabilizes the β_II conformation. Instead, a hydrogen bond with a solvent molecule can stabilize the β_I turn conformation.