Measurement of the Optical Rotation Angle Using a Rotating-Wave-Plate Stokes Polarimeter

¹ Department of Computer Application Engineering, Far-East University, Taiwan
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Cheng-Kung University, Taiwan
³ Graduate School of Mechanical Engineering, Far-East University, Taiwan

^a e-mail: jacklin@cc.feu.edu.tw

Abstract

A polarimeter based on Stokes-Mueller formalism and rotating-wave-plate Stokes polarimeter is successfully developed to measure the optical rotation angle in a chiral medium. The average relative error in the measured rotation angles of glucose solutions with concentrations ranging from 0 to 1.2g/dl is determined to be 3.78%. The correlation coefficient between the measured rotation angle and the glucose concentration is found to be 0.9995, while the standard deviation is just 0.00376 degrees. From the sol-gel materials containing C₁₇H₁₇ClO₆ with concentrations ranging from 0 to 0.0665g/ml, the average relative error in the measured rotation angles is determined to be 3.63%. Consequently, the developed system is evaluated with a precision of 5.4% approximately in rotation angle measurement.