Solid-State Chemistry and Polymorphism of the Nucleobase Adenine

• DOI: 10.1021/acs.cgd.6b00243
• Publication Date: 2016-04-14T18:57:49Z
• Authors: Tomislav Stolar; Stipe Lukin; Josip Požar; Mirta Rubčić; Graeme M. Day; Ivana Biljan; Dubravka Šišak Jung; Gordan Horvat; Krunoslav Užarević; Ernest Meštrović; Ivan Halasz
• Keywords: Nucleobase

The nucleobase adenine plays a pivotal role in the chemistry of life but is also becoming increasingly interesting as building block synthesis functional solid materials. Although commercially available solid, adenine's solid-state has so far been neglected. In this comprehensive study it shown that most often marketed mixture two polymorphs, one previously known and new polymorph. Both polymorphs exhibit layered structures with different hydrogen-bonding patterns within layers. crystal structure polymorph was elucidated using synchrotron powder X-ray diffraction. Polymorph occurrence conditions, interconversion, difference their thermodynamic stability were established theoretically experimentally revealing Z′ = 2 (known) stable relative to 1 (new). layers both are connected by weak interactions likely resulting stacking faults which manifested anisotropic line broadening diffraction patterns. Analysis few commercial samples revealed them all be mixture, could inconvenient experiments where properties material relevant.