Dibenzazepinyl ureas as dual NMR and CD probes of helical screw-sense preference in conformationally equilibrating dynamic foldamers

Conformationally mobile oligomers with helical structures, or 'dynamic foldamers', may populate a mixture of screw sense conformers whose relative proportion has been used as a means of communicating information on a molecular scale. The dibenzazepinyl urea provides a means of quantifying both the sense and degree of this screw sense preference through a combination of circular dichroism and NMR spectroscopy. The dibenzazepinyl urea probe is synthetically versatile, readily accessible, and easy to introduce to the terminus of an amide or a urea foldamer.