title: Synthesis, structural investigations, hydrogen-deuterium exchange studies, and molecular modeling of conformationally stablilized aromatic oligoamides.
abstract: Biasing the conformational preferences of aromatic oligoamides by internally placing intramolecular hydrogen bonds has led to a series of stably folded molecular strands. This article presents the results from extensive solid-state, solution, and computational studies on these folding oligomers. Depending on its backbone length, an oligoamide adopts a crescent or helical conformation. Surprisingly, despite the highly repetitive nature of the backbone, the internally placed, otherwise very similar intramolecular hydrogen bonds showed significantly different stabilities as demonstrated by hydrogen-deuterium exchange data. It was also observed that the hydrogen-bonding strength can be tuned by adjusting the substituents attached to the exterior of the aromatic backbones. Examining the amide hydrogen-deuterium exchange rates of trimers revealed that a six-membered hydrogen bond nearing the ester end is the weakest among all the four intramolecular hydrogen bonds of a molecule. This observation was verified by ab initio quantum mechanical calculations at the level of B3LYP/6-31G*. Such a "weak point" creates the "battle of the bulge" where backbone twisting is centered, which is consistently observed in the solid-state structures of the four trimer molecules studied. In the solid state, the oligomers assemble into interesting one-dimensional structures. A pronounced columnar packing of short oligomers (i.e., dimers, trimers, and tetramer) and channel-like, potentially ion-conducting stacks of longer oligomers (i.e., tetramer, pentamer, and hexamer) were observed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and MedChem Programme, National University of Singapore, 3 Science Drive 3, Singapore, 117543.
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.forename: Bo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Qin
authors.forename: Changliang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ren
authors.forename: Xiuying
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Yeow Kwan
authors.initials: YK
authors.lastname: Yip
authors.forename: Ruijuan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ye
authors.forename: Dawei
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Haibin
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Su
authors.forename: Huaqiang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zeng
mesh_terms: D041961:Deuterium Exchange Measurement; D006860:Hydrogen Bonding; D009682:Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008968:Molecular Conformation; D009757:Nylons / Q000138:chemical synthesis* / Q000737:chemistry*; D011789:Quantum Theory; D014961:X-Ray Diffraction
chemical_list: D009757:Nylons