Lukas Kaltschnee

Accurate determination of one-bond heteronuclear coupling constants with "pure shift" broadband proton-decoupled CLIP/CLAP-HSQC experiments.

We report broadband proton-decoupled CLIP/CLAP-HSQC experiments for the accurate determination of one-bond heteronuclear couplings and, by extension, for the reliable measurement of small residual dipolar coupling constants. The combination of an isotope-selective BIRD((d)) filter module with a non-selective (1)H inversion pulse is employed to refocus proton-proton coupling evolution prior to the acquisition of brief chunks of free induction decay that are subsequently assembled to reconstruct the fully-decoupled signal evolution. As a result, the cross-peaks obtained are split only by the heteronuclear one-bond coupling along the F2 dimension, allowing coupling constants to be extracted by measuring simple frequency differences between singlet maxima. The proton decoupling scheme presented has also been utilized in standard HSQC experiments, resulting in a fully-decoupled pure shift correlation map with significantly improved resolution.

Distinction of trans–cis photoisomers with comparable optical properties in multiple-state photochromic systems – examining a molecule with three azobenzenes via in situ irradiation NMR spectroscopy

Photochromic compounds like azobenzenes are widely used for the production of stimuli responsive materials. To analyse cascaded azobenzene switching inside a benzene-tricarboxamide (BTA) with three azobenzene moieties in a site-specific fashion, we used in situ irradiation NMR spectroscopy. Four photoisomers can be distinguished by their chemical shifts. Analysis of 1H, 13C and 15N shifts reveals that the configuration of one sidechain has an influence on the chemical shifts of both the other sidechains. Interconversion kinetics upon irradiation with ultraviolet (UV) light as well as molar fractions in photostationary states (PSS) were examined. Analysis of thermal fading of the different photoisomers into the ground state shows that thermal relaxation rates of all three azobenzene moieties behave as if they were independent of each other.

CLIP-COSY: A Clean In-Phase Experiment for the Rapid Acquisition of COSY-type Correlations

The COSY experiment is an essential homonuclear 2D NMR experiment for the assignment of resonances. Its multiplet line shape, however, is often overly complicated, potentially leads to signal intensity losses, and is responsible for long minimum overall acquisition times. Herein, we present CLIP-COSY, a COSY-type experiment yielding clean in-phase peaks. It can be recorded within a few minutes and benefits from enhanced signal intensities for most cross-peaks. In combination with non-uniform sampling, the experiment times can be further reduced, and the in-phase multiplets enable the application of modern homonuclear decoupling techniques in both dimensions. As antiphase cancelations are avoided, CLIP-COSY can also be applied to macromolecules and other samples with broadened lines.

Real-time broadband proton-homodecoupled CLIP/CLAP-HSQC for automated measurement of heteronuclear one-bond coupling constants

A new method is proposed that allows broadband homonuclear decoupled CLIP/CLAP-HSQC NMR spectra to be acquired at virtually no extra cost in measurement time. The real-time (windowed) acquisition protocol applied follows a scheme recently devised for recording pure shift (broadband homonuclear decoupled) heteronuclear single quantum correlation (HSQC) spectra. To minimize systematic errors in the apparent coupling constants obtained using real-time homonuclear decoupling, we extended the acquisition scheme to include cycling of radiofrequency pulse phases both from chunk to chunk during windowed acquisition, and from scan to scan during time averaging, allowing robust coupling constant measurement. The new real-time pure shift CLIP/CLAP-HSQC experiments are designed to speed up coupling constant determination, to increase the sensitivity of measurement in favorable cases, and to simplify the extraction of accurate one-bond heteronuclear couplings from pure in- or anti-phase doublets using automatic peak picking. The scope and limitations of the method are discussed, and a variety of experimental tests are reported.

Uncovering Key Structural Features of an Enantioselective Peptide-Catalyzed Acylation Utilizing Advanced NMR Techniques

We report on a detailed NMR spectroscopic study of the catalyst-substrate interaction of a highly enantioselective oligopeptide catalyst that is used for the kinetic resolution of trans-cycloalkane-1,2-diols via monoacylation. The extraordinary selectivity has been rationalized by molecular dynamics as well as density functional theory (DFT) computations. Herein we describe the conformational analysis of the organocatalyst studied by a combination of nuclear Overhauser effect (NOE) and residual dipolar coupling (RDC)-based methods that resulted in an ensemble of four final conformers. To corroborate the proposed mechanism, we also investigated the catalyst in mixtures with both trans-cyclohexane-1,2-diol enantiomers separately, using advanced NMR methods such as T1 relaxation time and diffusion-ordered spectroscopy (DOSY) measurements to probe molecular aggregation. We determined intramolecular distance changes within the catalyst after diol addition from quantitative NOE data. Finally, we developed a pure shift EASY ROESY experiment using PSYCHE homodecoupling to directly observe intermolecular NOE contacts between the trans-1,2-diol and the cyclohexyl moiety of the catalyst hidden by spectral overlap in conventional spectra. All experimental NMR data support the results proposed by earlier computations including the proposed key role of dispersion interaction.

The influence of electronic modifications on rotational barriers of bis-NHC-complexes as observed by dynamic NMR spectroscopy.

There has been much debate about the σ‐donor and π‐acceptor properties of N‐heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs). While a lot of synthetic modifications have been performed with the goal of optimizing properties of the catalyst to tune reactivity in various transformations (e.g. metathesis), direct methods to characterize σ‐donor and π‐acceptor properties are still few. We believe that dynamic NMR spectroscopy can improve understanding of this aspect. Thus, we investigated the intramolecular dynamics of metathesis precatalysts bearing two NHCs. We chose four systems with one identical NHC ligand (N,N′‐Bis(2,4,6‐trimethylphenyl)‐imidazolinylidene (SIMes) in all four cases) and NHCewg ligands bearing four different electron‐withdrawing groups (ewg). Both rotational barriers of the respective Ru‐NHC‐bonds change significantly when the electron density of one of the NHCs (NHCewg) is modified. Although it is certainly not possible to fully dissect σ‐donor and π‐acceptor portions of the bonding situations in the respective Ru‐NHC‐bond via dynamic NMR spectroscopy, our studies nevertheless show that the analysis of the rotation around the Ru‐SIMes‐bond can be used as a spectroscopic parameter complementary to cyclic voltammetry. Surprisingly, we observed that the rotation around the Ru‐NHCewg‐bond shows the same trend as the initiation rate of a ring‐closing metathesis of the four investigated bis‐NHC‐complexes. Copyright

Extraction of distance restraints from pure shift NOE experiments

NMR techniques incorporating pure shift methods to improve signal resolution have recently attracted much attention, owing to their potential use in studies of increasingly complex molecular systems. Extraction of frequencies from these simplified spectra enables easier structure determination, but only a few of the methods presented provide structural parameters derived from signal integral measurements. In particular, for quantification of the nuclear Overhauser effect (NOE) it is highly desirable to utilize pure shift techniques where signal overlap normally prevents accurate signal integration, to enable measurement of a larger number of interatomic distances. However, robust methods for the measurement of interatomic distances using the recently developed pure shift techniques have not been reported to date. In this work we discuss some of the factors determining the accuracy of measurements of signal integrals in interferogram-based Zangger-Sterk (ZS) pure shift NMR experiments. The ZS broadband homodecoupling technique is used in different experiments designed for quantitative NOE determination from pure shift spectra. It is shown that the techniques studied can be used for quantitative extraction of NOE-derived distance restraints, as exemplified for the test case of strychnine.

A pure shift experiment with increased sensitivity and superior performance for strongly coupled systems

Motivated by the persisting need for enhanced resolution in solution state NMR spectra, pure shift techniques such as Zangger-Sterk decoupling have recently attracted widespread interest. These techniques for homonuclear decoupling offer enhanced resolution in one- and multidimensional proton detected experiments by simplifying multiplet structures. In this work, a modification to the popular Zangger-Sterk technique PEPSIE (Perfect Echo Pure Shift Improved Experiment) is presented, which decouples pairs of spins even if they share the same volume element. This in turn can drastically improve the sensitivity, as compared to classical Zangger-Sterk decoupling, as larger volume elements can be used to collect the detected signal. Most interestingly, even in the presence of moderate strong coupling, the PEPSIE experiment produces clean and widely artifact free spectra. In order to better understand this - to us initially - surprising behaviour we performed analyses using numerical simulations and derived an (approximate) analytical solution from density matrix formalism. We show that this experiment is particularly suitable to study samples with strong signal clustering, a situation which can render classic Zangger-Sterk decoupling inefficient.

perfectBASH: Band-selective homonuclear decoupling in peptides and peptidomimetics

Pure shift techniques have recently attracted much attention, as they have the ability to reduce spectral overlap and thus to simplify the analysis of complex and congested spectral regions. For peptides, band‐selective pure shift approaches are often the most reasonable choice among these, when spectra need to be simplified along proton dimensions. Band‐selective approaches usually offer the highest sensitivity of all pure shift methods, albeit at the cost that signals can only be acquired in a single‐frequency region of the spectrum, in which protons are well isolated in the proton spectrum. For α‐peptides, signals are usually acquired either in the amide‐proton region or in the α‐proton region. Herein, we present experiments, which enable the pure shift acquisition in both the amide‐proton and the α‐proton regions of α‐peptides simultaneously, without sacrificing the characteristics of band‐selective pure shift methods to provide high sensitivity. The “perfectBASH” approach discussed here combines the perfect echo experiment with band‐selective decoupling. It can be used for band‐selective pure shift acquisition of 1H, TOCSY, CLIP‐COSY, relayed CLIP‐COSY, NOESY, and EASY‐ROESY spectra, with proton–proton decoupling over the full backbone region of α‐peptides, which is most interesting for samples prepared without isotopic enrichment. As the utility of this technique is by no means limited to α‐peptides, we further illustrate its utility for 1H‐NMR studies of a peptidomimetic oligourea.