Weakly oriented liquid-crystal NMR solvents as a general tool to determine relative configurations.
A new NMR method to determine the relative configuration of asymmetric centres is presented. It proceeds through the use of a weakly ordered solvent and the measurement of orientational order parameters. The method is illustrated by using dihydropyridone derivatives for which the orientations and the relative configurations of the asymmetric carbon atoms are determined unambiguously.