Posts Tagged ‘biological systems’

The Chirality of Lemniscular Octaphyrins

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

In the previous post,  it was noted that  Möbius annulenes are intrinsically chiral, and should therefore in principle be capable of resolution into enantiomers. The synthesis of such an annulene by Herges and co-workers was a racemic one; no attempt was reported at any resolution into such enantiomers. Here theory can help, since calculating the optical rotation [α]D is nowadays a relatively reliable process for rigid molecules. The rotation (in °) calculated for that Möbius annulene was relatively large compared to that normally measured for most small molecules.

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