Hydrogen-Bonded Duplexes with Lengthened Linkers

Connecting basic hydrogen-bonding units with lengthened flexible or rigid linkers generates oligoamide strands that carry new H-bonding sequences and association specificity, leading to H-bonded homo- and heteroduplexes with association constants in the 104 M–1 range in chloroform. Computational and experimental studies indicate that in duplexes with rigid aromatic linkers the oligoamide strands adopt bent conformations that allow the formation of interstrand H-bonds and accommodate the introduced aromatic liners, offering a new series of association units.