In situ Second-Harmonic Generation Circular Dichroism with Submonolayer Sensitivity

In this work, we present an experimental setup for the in situ and ex situ study of the optical activity of samples, which can be prepared under ultra-high vacuum (UHV) conditions by second-harmonic generation circular dichroism (SHG-CD) over a broad spectral range. The use of a racemic mixture as a qualified reference for the anisotropy factor is described and, as an example, the chiroptical properties of 1.5 μm thick (multilayers) as well as sub-monolayer thin films of the R- and S-enantiomer of 1,1′-Bi-2-naphthol (BINOL) evaporated onto BK7 substrates were investigated.