Baylor University in Waco, Texas has received a U.S. patent for a new type of polarimeter, an instrument to measure and interpret transverse waves, such as light waves. The new polarimeter was developed by Baylor chemistry professor Kenneth Busch and lab coordinator Dennis Rabbe.
United States Patent 7911608 covers not only the device hardware, but also the methods and process of analyzing the data the polarimeter produces. Certain compounds differ only in the way that they interact with polarized light. Plane polarized light is light whose electric vector moves back and forth in a plane. When plane polarized light passes through an optically active medium, the plane of polarization is rotated. The polarimeter measures this rotation.
To measure the rotation with a conventional polarimeter, a polarizing prism must be physically rotated and this requires some mechanical parts. The polarimeter developed by Busch and Rabbe, however, has no moving parts, which eliminates problems associated with wear and tear and possible inaccurate readings.
The Busch/Rabbe polarimeter generates a range of wavelengths with different rotations. The patent includes the statistical methods for analyzing these data, called partial least squares regression, that produces a mathematical model.
Baylor’s polarimeter could prove useful in the testing of pharmaceuticals. Most pharmaceuticals are optically active compounds, composed of mirror-image or enantiomeric pairs. In some cases, one member of an enantiomeric pair is the active ingredient of the drug, while the other may be either inactive or toxic, which makes enantiomeric purity an important factor with drug formulations. Polarimeters are used to determine that enantiomeric purity.
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