# A m-quaterphenyl probe for absolute configurational assignments of primary and secondary amines

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method using a m-quaterphenyl probe and calculations to determine the 3D structure of chiral amines.

## Contribution

A novel m-quaterphenyl probe combined with DFT calculations for assigning absolute configurations of amines.

## Key findings

- The m-quaterphenyl probe forms conjugates with chiral amines that show ECCD.
- DFT calculations correlate with the CD spectra's sign and intensity.
- The method works for amino alcohols, amino acid esters, and secondary amines.

## Abstract

We report a method for determining the absolute configurations of chiral amino alcohols, amino acid esters, and secondary amines through the combined use of a m-quaterphenyl probe 1 and theoretical calculations. The probe 1 is covalently attached to chiral amines to form conjugates that exhibit exciton-coupled circular dichroism (ECCD) in the m-quaterphenyl chromophores. The calculated ratios of the P and M conformers, obtained via DFT calculations, show a correlation with both the sign and intensity of the experimentally observed CD spectra.