Synchronous helicity control in zinc bilinone trimer

In order to develop an artificial signal transmission/amplification system triggered by chiral recognition, we synthesized a series of zinc bilinone (ZnBL) trimers bearing a tripodal spacer and investigated homohelicity induction by complexation with chiral α-amino esters. Controlling the length of the peripheral alkyl groups in ZnBL moieties led to preorganization of the trimer to homohelical conformers. In addition, complexation with chiral α-amino esters induced the formation of the chiral homohelical conformer in which three ZnBL moieties adopted the same helicity.