Effects of Structural Differences on the NMR Chemical Shifts in Isostructural Dipeptides

Porous crystalline dipeptides have gained recent attention for their potential as gas-storage materials. Within this large class is a group of dipeptides containing alanine, valine, and isoleucine with very similar crystal structures. We report the 13C (carbonyl and Cα) and 15N (amine and amide) solid-state NMR isotropic chemical shifts in a series of seven such isostructural porous dipeptides as well as shift tensor data for the carbonyl and amide sites. Using their known crystal structures and aided by ab initio quantum chemical calculations for the resonance assignments, we elucidate trends relating local structure, hydrogen-bonding patterns, and chemical shift. We find good correlation between the backbone dihedral angles and the Cα1 and Cα2 shifts. For the C1 shift tensor, the δ11 value shifts downfield as the hydrogen-bond distance increases, δ22 shifts upfield, and δ33 shows little variation. The C2 shift tensor shows no appreciable correlation with structural parameters. For the N2 tensor, δ11 shows little dependence on the hydrogen-bond length, whereas δ22 and δ33 both show a decrease in shielding as the hydrogen bond shortens. Our analysis teases apart some, but not all, structural contributors to the observed differences the solid-state NMR chemical shifts.