Tunable conformation and stability of amidourea-based hydrogen-bonded heteroduplexes

A class of multiply hydrogen-bonded heteroduplexes were constructed from readily available amidourea derivatives, and their structures and association stabilities were investigated. Although the amidourea derivatives possessed different spacers or termini, they could adjust their conformations to achieve an optimal binding module. Consequently, all the heteroduplexes adopted similar hydrogen-bonding patterns through eight intermolecular bifurcated hydrogen bonds based on the amidourea motif. Moreover, it was also found that the association stabilities of the heteroduplexes could be well tuned by varying the spacers or termini of the monomers.