Hydrogen bonds in crystalline d-alanine: diffraction and spectroscopic evidence for differences between enantiomers

• Published in: IUCrJ Vol. 5; no. Pt 1; pp. 6 - 12
• Main Authors: Belo, Ezequiel A, Pereira, Jose E M, Freire, Paulo T C, Argyriou, Dimitri N, Eckert, Juergen, Bordallo, Heloisa N
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England International Union of Crystallography 01-01-2018; International Union of Crystallography (IUCr)
• Subjects: Alanine; Amino acids; Biological Science; Chemical properties; chirality; configurational change; Crystallization; density-functional-theory-based methods; Diffraction; Enantiomers; hydrogen bonding; Hydrogen bonds; Inorganic and Physical Chemistry; INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY; intermolecular interactions; materials science; Mathematical analysis; Neutron diffraction; Observations; phase transitions; properties of solids; Raman spectra; Research Papers; structure analysis; hydrogen bonding; configurational change; properties of solids; chirality; materials science; structure analysis; phase transitions; intermolecular interactions; density-functional-theory-based methods
• ISSN: 2052-2525; 2052-2525
• DOI: 10.1107/S2052252517015573

Enantiomeric amino acids have specific physiological functions in complex biological systems. Systematic studies focusing on the solid-state properties of d-amino acids are, however, still limited. To shed light on this field, structural and spectroscopic studies of d-alanine using neutron powder diffraction, polarized Raman scattering and
calculations of harmonic vibrational frequencies were carried out. Clear changes in the number of vibrational modes are observed as a function of temperature, which can be directly connected to variations of the N-D bond lengths. These results reveal dissimilarities in the structural properties of d-alanine compared with l-alanine.