Published on Web 04/29/2008
Encapsulation of Protonated Diamines in a Water-Soluble, Chiral,
Supramolecular Assembly Allows for Measurement of
Hydrogen-Bond Breaking Followed by Nitrogen Inversion/Rotation1
Michael D. Pluth, Robert G. Bergman,* and Kenneth N. Raymond*
Department of Chemistry, UniVersity of California, Berkeley, California 94720, and Chemistry
DiVision, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720
Received September 17, 2007; E-mail: rbergman@berkeley.edu; raymond@socrates.berkeley.edu
Abstract: Amine nitrogen inversion, difficult to observe in aqueous solution, is followed in a chiral,
supramolecular host molecule with purely rotational T-symmetry that reduces the local symmetry of
encapsulated monoprotonated diamines and enables the observation and quantification of ∆Gq for the
combined hydrogen-bond breaking and nitrogen inversion/rotation (NIR) process. Free energies of activation
for the combined hydrogen-bond breaking and NIR process inside of the chiral assembly were determined
by the NMR coalescence method. Activation parameters for ejection of the protonated amines from the
assembly confirm that the NIR process responsible for the coalescence behavior occurs inside of the
assembly rather than by a guest ejection/NIR/re-encapsulation mechanism. For one of the diamines,
N,N,N′,N′-tetramethylethylenediamine, the relative energy barriers for the hydrogen-bond breaking and
NIR process were calculated at the G3(MP2)//B3LYP/6-31++G(d,p) level of theory, and these agreed
well with the experimental data.
Introduction
hydrogens R to the nitrogen of prochiral amines or monitoring
the NMR spectra of prochiral amines as a function of pH.9–13
Nitrogen pyramidal inversion (umbrella inversion motion) in
amines involves moving the lone pair from one side of the
tetrahedral amine structure to the other. Studies of amine
nitrogen inversion have come from most disciplines of chem-
istry, including theoretical, computational, synthetic, and bio-
logical chemistry.2–6 However, direct measurement of the rapid
rate of this transformation in solution is difficult. Most measure-
ments of the inversion free-energy barrier7 have come from gas-
phase far-infrared or microwave spectroscopies.8 Inversion
barriers in the gas phase for alkylamines generally do not exceed
9 kcal/mol, but steric hindrance, hybridization changes, or
hydrogen bonding can increase the barrier by g5 kcal/mol.9
Most measurements of nitrogen inversion barriers in solution
have come from NMR solution studies and rely on monitoring
changes in the chemical environment of functional groups near
the nitrogen atom. This can be aided by monitoring enantiotopic
Although often referred to as nitrogen inversion in the literature,
solution measurements of the inversion process almost always
measure a combined nitrogen inversion/rotation (NIR), which
is required to change the chemical environment of the functional
groups being monitored.14,15
Because of the experimental difficulties of probing NIR
processes with low activation barriers by NMR, most NMR
studies have necessarily focused on amines with higher inversion
barriers enforced by specific structural or electronic constraints,
such as those in aziridines (10-20 kcal/mol),16,17 diaziridines
(20-30 kcal/mol),18,19 azanorbornanes (>13 kcal/mol),20,21
hydrogen-bonded amines (10-20 kcal/mol),9,22 or sterically
hindered amines.14 Recent work has also focused on controlling
the rate of nitrogen inversion by a variety of strategies, such as
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(1) Paper number 40 in the series Coordination Number Incommensurate
Cluster Formation. For the previous paper in the series see: Pluth,
M. D.; Tiedemann, B. E. F.; van Halbeek, H.; Nunlist, R.; Raymond,
K. N. Inorg. Chem. 2008, 47, 1411.
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(7) All of the energy barriers measured in this paper are free energies of
activation.
(20) Nelson, S. F.; Ippoliti, J. T.; Frigo, T. B.; Petillo, P. A. J. Am. Chem.
Soc. 1989, 111, 1776.
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6362 J. AM. CHEM. SOC. 2008, 130, 6362–6366
10.1021/ja076691h CCC: $40.75
2008 American Chemical Society