Posts Tagged ‘overlap/energy match’

More simple experiments with crystal data. The pyramidalisation of nitrogen.

Saturday, November 1st, 2014

We are approaching 1 million recorded crystal structures (actually, around 716,000 in the CCDC and just over 300,00 in COD). One delight with having this wealth of information is the simple little explorations that can take just a minute or so to do. This one was sparked by my helping a colleague update a set of interactive lecture demos dealing with stereochemistry. Three of the examples included molecules where chirality originates in stereogenic centres with just three attached groups. An example might be a sulfoxide, for which the priority rule is to assign the lone pair present with atomic number zero. The issue then arises as to whether this centre is configurationally stable, i.e. does it invert in an umbrella motion slowly or quickly.  My initial intention was to see if crystal structures could cast any light at all on this aspect.

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