Cotton effects

Circular dichroism is extensively employed in the stmctural study of biological polymers, but not in the study of synthetic polymers. This is because most biological polymers are optically active, whereas most synthetic polymers are not. However, if the optically active vinyl or vinylidene monomers are incorporated in a synthetic polymer, the synthetic polymr could become optically active. 

FIGURE 12.10 Loss of Cotton effect —, Cotton effect —, loss of Cotton effect. 

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The 260 nm band of chiral thiiranes is optically active and a Cotton effect is observed R) (+)-methylthiirane shows a negative Cotton effect at ca. 250 nm followed by a positive effect below 200 nm. An MO analysis indicates that charge transfer contributions are most important in determining the optical activity of the transition (81JCS(F2)503). The... 

The UV spectra of thiirane 1-oxide and (15,25)-(+)-2-methylthiirane 1-oxide show a broad maximum at about 205 nm (e —23 000). The latter shows a positive Cotton effect at low energy followed by a negative effect at high energy. The lowest excited states of thiirane 1-oxide involve excitations from the two lone pairs of the oxygen atom (79G19). 2,3-Diphenylthiirene 1-oxide and 1,1-dioxide show absorption due to the 1,2-diphenyl-ethylene chromophore. 

Figure A Diagrammatic representation of the Cotton effect (actually po-sitivc Cotton effect. The negative effect oceur.s when the CD curve. shows a minimum and the ORD curve is the reverse of the above).

The behaviours of CD and ORD curves in the vicinity of an absorption band are collectively known as the Cotton effect after the French physicist A. Colton who discovered them in 189S. Their importance in the present context is that molecules with the same absolute conhguration will exhibit the same Cotton effect for the same d-d absorption and, if the configuration of one compound is known, that of closeiy similar ones can be established by comparison. 

The absolute configuration of C-3 of the chromophore 4 of an isopyoverdin was determined as S from the CD spectrum (Cotton effect -1-242 nm, —290nm, - -358nm) of 420 obtained from isopyoverdin by acidic hydrolysis (01T1019). 

The Cotton effect in coordination compounds. R. D. Gillard, Prog. Inorg. Chem., 1966, 7, 215-276 (164). 

Surprisingly, in contrast to a- and y9-peptides, CD spectra of y-peptides gave only a very hmited amount of stmctural information. Experiments conducted on heh-cal y" -hexapeptides did not reveal any characteristic CD signature (no Cotton effect) [200, 201]. Similarly, y -peptides built from 2,4-disubstituted y-amino acids of like configuration and shown to adopt a more stable 2.6-helical structure, do not display typical CD curves either [201]. However, CD spectra of the 2.6-helical -peptide 147 and its Boc-protected derivative recorded in MeOH and CD3CN present an intense maximum around 215 nm with a shoulder at ca. 200 nm [207]. 

Circular Dichroism. - The absolute configuration of the ot-hydr oxyphosphonat e (49) was established through its negative Cotton effect at 215 nm.144... 

A comparison of the thus calculated with the measured specific rotations of the 0th- to 4th-generation dendrimers of this kind gave a close resemblance, with a curve, approaching asymptotically a limiting value (Fig. 26). It was also shown that the shape of this curve was independent of solvent, concentration and temperature. This was not the case when CD spectra of these dendrimers were compared (Fig. 27) in solvents such as CH2C12 and f-butyl methyl ether a constant rise of the Cotton effect was observed, which correlates with the increasing amount of benzene chromophores in the dendrimers. However, in the... 

The absolute configuration of C-3 of the chromophore 459 of isopyoverdins was determined to be S from the circular dichroism (CD) spectrum (Cotton effect +242 nm, —290 nm, +358 nm) of 460 obtained from isopyoverdin by acidic hydrolysis <2001T1019>. Diorganotin(iv) complexes with 4//-pyrido[l,2-/z pyrimidin-4-ones 461 <1996AOM47>, complexes of 2-methyl- and 2-methyl-8-nitro-9-hydroxy-4//-pyrido[l,2-tf]pyrimidin-4-ones with Ag(i), Cu(ll), Ni(n), Co(n), and Mn(n) ions <2000RJD587>, 2,4-dimethyl-9-hydroxypyrido[l,2-tf]pyrimidinium perchlorate and its complexes with prasedynium, neodymium, samarium, and europium <2000RJD310> were characterized by UV spectroscopy. 

Compounds having the same optical configuration show similar Cotton effects. If the absolute configuration is known (for example, from x-ray diffraction) for one optically active compound, a similar Cotton effect exhibited by another compound indicates that it has the same optical configuration as the known. In other words, if two compounds give electronic transitions that show Cotton effects that... 

This point of view finds its justification in the following observations. Compounds 8 (pyrocalciferol) and 9 (isopyrocalciferol), having opposite absolute configurations of the stereogenic centres near the dienes, show lA —> 1B Cotton effects at about 275 nm of the same sign and intensity. The reason for this is that only the twist of the chromophore determines the optical activity in fact the diene moieties are distorted in the same sense in 8 and 9, as found by X-ray diffraction16. 

The correlation shown in Scheme 3 has been formulated between the sense of twist and the sign of the lA -+ 1B Cotton effect. 

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