The exploration and analysis of alternative orienting media for use in residual dipolar coupling NMR

Abstract

Residual dipolar couplings are a distance and angle dependent coupling observed by NMR spectroscopy when a molecule is in an anisotropic environment. The magnitude of these residual dipolar couplings can be used to determine 3-dimensional structural information about the molecule in solution. Liquid crystals or polymers are often used as orienting media, but these compounds are often difficult to prepare, incompatible with solvents, and reactive with some compounds. The solution would be a chemically inert substance that has channels running vertically with a diameter in the micrometer scale. In this research several substances were tested, and the orienting effect was measured from the dipolar couplings observed in the solvent, CDCl3, as determined using 2H-Observe NMR experiments.