Full Control of the Chiral Overpass Effect in Helical Polymers: P/M Screw Sense Induction by Remote Chiral Centers After Bypassing the First Chiral Residue

Abstract

In helical polymers, helical sense induction is usually commanded by teleinduction mechanism, where the largest substituent of the chiral residue directly attached to the main chain is the one that commands the helical sense. In this work, different helical structures with different helical senses are induced in a helical polymer [poly-(phenylacetylene)] when the conformational composition of two different dihedral angles of a pendant group with more than two chiral residues is tamed. Thus, while the dihedral angle at chiral residue 1 [(R)- or (S)-alanine], attached to the backbone, produces an extended or bent conformation in the pendant resulting in two scaffolds with different stretching degree, the second dihedral angle at chiral residue 2 [(R)- or (S)-methoxyphenylacetamide] places the substituents of this chiral center in a different spatial orientation, originating opposite helical senses at the polymer that are induced through a total control of the “chiral overpass effect”