We report on the use of hollow-core photonic crystal fibers to monitor the evolution of chemical reactions. The combination of tight confinement and long interaction length allows single-pass spectroscopic measurements using less than a microliter volume of chemicals with good accuracy. As a proof of principle, we used here nonlinear Raman spectroscopy for a reaction screening of the acidic catalyzed esterification of methanol and acetic acid.

We monitor the reaction of an acid with an alcohol inside a hollow-core photonic crystal fibre using Raman spectroscopy. The method uses tiny amount of chemicals and allows precise measurement of the activation energy.

We report an optofluidic method that enables to efficiently measure the enantiomeric excess of chiral molecules at low concentrations. The approach is to monitor the optical activity induced by a Kagome-lattice hollowcore photonic crystal fiber filled with a sub-μL volume of chiral compounds. The technique also allows monitoring the enzymatic racemization of Rmandelic acid.

No abstract