Polyisocyanides as a new alignment medium to measure residual dipolar couplings for small organic molecules.

Polyisocycanides were found to give anisotropic molecular alignment in the magnetic field and are useful to measure residual dipolar couplings (RDCs) from analytes, e.g. strychnine. They show less quadrupolar splitting of the deuterated solvent signal compared with other liquid crystal systems such as Poly-γ-benzyl-L-glutamate (PBLG) and hence less undesired line broadening.