The easy-to-interpret and rapid SelEXSIDE NMR experiment for measuring long-range NMR analyses of the 3D-structure of conformationally exible small molecules in solution are oen under-determined i.e. the stereochemistry or conformation cannot be denitively assigned because the number and accuracy of experimental parameters is too small to account for all of the possible congurations and conformations of the molecule. In organic molecules, 1 H-1 H scalar coupling constants ( 3 J HH ) and NOE measurements are the common NMR parameters used for this and are routinely combined with computational methods to improve structure elucidations or semi-quantitative methods exemplied by 'J-based congurational analysis' to acyclic systems. [1][2][3] We have recently demonstrated that increased accuracy in quantitative NOE-distance analysis of small molecules 4 allows ner details of dynamic 3D molecular structures to be resolved -for example identifying very small populations ($2%) of molecular conformers, 5 accurate determination of the rotational populations of a exible chain 6 and stereochemical elucidation of contiguous quaternary centres.
7Adding quantitative analysis of 2-and 3-bond 1 H-13 C scalar coupling constants ( n J CH ), of which there are many more than 3 J HH couplings in most organic molecules, enables even greater levels of discrimination such that we have successfully described the strong helical or linear conformational preference of iteratively homologated alkane diastereomers, despite thousands of potential conformers. challenging to accurately measure small coupling constants (<2 Hz) with this approach. An alternative approach to dealing with lineshape distortion is to use J-resolved approaches, exemplied by EXSIDE.12 Here the desired heteronuclear coupling constant is isolated and resolved as clean in-phase doublets in the indirect (vertical) F1 dimension of the spectrum (Fig. 1a). The F1-splitting of the peaks is the multiple of n J CH and a user-selected J-scaling factor, N. This provides an easy accurate means to measure even small n J CH values, down to $1 Hz in most cases. Such F1-based approaches, however, are relatively slow and weak and it generally requires several hours of measurement for each proton, while intensities are also reduced by T 2 relaxation in the extended J-scaled INEPT preparation period. The long experiment time arises because a large number of t 1 increments are needed to resolve small couplings in F1. Our recently reported 13 C band-selective EXSIDE 13 (SelEXSIDE) method substantially reduces the experiment time to just a few minutes by measuring each n J CH separately with a much narrower 13 C window, thus needing fewer t 1 increments. However the short experiment time also reduces signal averaging and thus sensitivity, so in