Conformational control over an aldehyde fragment by selective vibrational excitation of interchangeable remote antennas.

We apply interchangeable vibrational antennas (OH or NH2 group) to achieve unprecedented conformational control over the heavy aldehyde fragment in 2-formyl-2H-azirine. The two aldehyde conformers were manipulated bi-directionally, using selective vibrational excitation with narrowband near-infrared (NIR) light tuned at the wavenumbers corresponding to OH and NH2 stretching overtones and combination modes.