Tailor-made naphthyridines: Self-assembling multiple hydrogen-bonded supramolecular architectures from dimer to helix

Stepwise changes of functional oxo and amino groups in 1,8-naphthyridines to modify the supramolecular architecture have been carried out. The first example of a naphthyridine helix has been found and its structure established by X-ray crystallography. The design is based on hydroxy and amido tautomeric naphthyridines which crystallize in dimers or catemers, one of them attaining helicity. The most stable tautomer present in all the compounds discussed in this paper, as well as the formation of hydrogen-bonded dimers or catemers, was established by X-ray crystallography and rationalized with theoretical calculations.