The Quest for Relationships between Conformation and Chiroptical Properties: From Solution to Solid State

the enormous interest of the late prof. ernest ludwig eliel for stereochemical problems has led not only to his publication of a impressively long list of papers, books and countless invitations for keynote lectures at conferences, but has stimulated a similar interest in this field among the many who have had the opportunity to work with him. ernest's seed on one of us turn out in the quest for new relationships between conformation and chiroptical properties. the germ was a simple molecule, cis-3-hydroxythiane s-oxide, that enabled us to show that the specific rotation at any position of its conformational equilibrium is a weighted average of the specific rotation of the individual conformations. we are now currently involved in the challenging task of the controlled building of solid structures from bottom-up approaches. to this end we have covalently attached optically pure phosphonates within the layers of γ-zirconium phosphate leading to chirality at the supramolecular level. we have shown that conformation and chiroptical properties are also strongly intertwined in the solid state.