Double-Stranded Helical Oligomers Covalently Bridged by Rotary Cyclic Boronate Esters

Novel double helices covalently bridged by cyclic boronate esters were synthesized from complementary dimers with an m-terphenyl backbone joined by a chiral or achiral phenylene linker bearing diethyl boronates and diols, respectively. The X-ray crystallographic analysis and variable-temperature NMR and circular dichroism measurements, along with theoretical calculations, revealed that the double helices function as a molecular rotor in which the cyclic boronate ester units rotate, yielding two stable rotamers at low temperatures. Moreover, our data indicates that the covalently bonded double helices can undergo a unique helix-inversion simultaneously with a rotational motion of the boronate esters.