Oligo-m-aniline Foldamers

Nitrogen atoms showed intriguing properties such as, they can adopt sp2 or sp3 electronic configurations and form various degrees of conjugations with the adjacent aromatic rings depending on the electric nature of aromatic rings. Through deliberate combination of nitrogen atoms with aromatics of different electric nature, oligo-m-aniline foldamers were synthesized with a two-directional synthetic protocol. The synthesized hexamer and heptamer gave a snake-shape folding structure in the crystalline state. By means of 2D NOESY NMR experiments, both the hexamer and heptamer were found to adopt similar folding structures in solution as those in the solid state.