Quesada-Moreno María Mar, Cruz-Cabeza Aurora J, Avilés-Moreno Juan Ramón, Cabildo Pilar, Claramunt Rosa M, Alkorta Ibon, Elguero José, Zúñiga Francisco J, López-González Juan Jesús
Departamento de Química Física y Analítica, Universidad de Jaén , Campus Las Lagunillas, E-23071 Jaén, Spain.
School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Sciences, The University of Manchester , The Mill, Sackville Street, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom.
J Phys Chem A. 2017 Aug 3;121(30):5665-5674. doi: 10.1021/acs.jpca.7b05220. Epub 2017 Jul 26.
2-Propyl-1H-benzimidazole (2PrBzIm) is a small molecule, commercially available, which displays a curious behavior in the solid state. 2PrBzIm, although devoid of chirality by fast rotation about a single bond of the propyl group in solution, crystallizes as a conglomerate showing chiroptical properties. An exhaustive analysis of its crystal structure and a wide range of experiments monitored by vibrational circular dichroism spectroscopy eliminated all possibilities of an artifact. What remains is a new example of the unexplained phenomenon of persistent supramolecular chirality.
