Regiochemistry of topochemical reactions depends on the crystal packing and biasing the regiochemistry necessitates precise crystal engineering. The pristine crystals of monomer 1 upon topochemical azidealkyne cycloaddition (TAAC) reaction give a 1 : 1 blend of 1,4-and 1,5-triazole-linked polymers due to the presence of two self-sorted reactive conformers in the crystal. We designed a binary isomorphous cocrystal of monomer 1 and a structurally similar dummy molecule 2 to limit the number of reactive conformers of 1 to one and thus to get one type of polymer. Equimolar solution of 1 and 2 in chloroform-acetone mixture gave two 1 : 1 cocrystals Co-I and Co-II. The Co-II, a chloroform adduct, on heating undergoes desolvation and polymorphic transition to Co-I. Co-I is isomorphic to 1 and 2 and possess self-sorted arrays of 1 and 2. Heating Co-I results in the TAAC polymerization giving 1,4-triazolyllinked polymer of 1 selectively, showing the power of crystal engineering in regiocontrol.
Chemical reactions governed by the molecular arrangementin crystals-topochemical reactions-are attractive in terms of greener, catalyst-free and solvent-free reaction conditions, nonnecessity of chromatographic purification, and their ability to form unique products that are not accessible by the conventional solution-phase methods. [1][2][3][4][5][6] However unlike solution-state reactions that are well-explored, factors that influence topochemical reactions are still poorly understood. [7][8][9][10] The solution-state reactivity of molecules could be easily regulated by altering the reaction conditions such as solvent, reagents, catalyst, etc. However in the case