Stereogenicity Revisited. Proposal of Holantimers for Comprehending the Relationship between Stereogenicity and Chirality

Abstract

The close relationship between stereogenicity and chirality has frequently caused serious confusion in the stereochemistry of organic molecules and inorganic complexes. To clarify the entangled relationship between them, we have proposed the concept of "holantimer". In addition, we have newly defined the concept of "stereoisogram" in order to correlate a set of stereoiomers based on holantimeric and enantiomeric relationships. These concepts have been applied to tetrahedral organic molecules as well as to square-planar inorganic complexes. The stereogenicity characterized by a stereoisogram has been called "RS-stereogenicity", which has been clarified to be a property that should be correlated to chirality. The stereoisograms of tetrahedral molecules have been examined and classified into five types, i.e., type I (chiral/RS-stereogenic), type II (chiral/RS-astereogenic), type III (chiral/RS-stereogenic), type IV (achiral/RS-astereogenic), and type V (achiral/RS-stereogenic), where RS descriptors are concluded to be specified in cases of types I, III, and V. On the other hand, the stereoisograms of square-planar complexes have been classified to two types, i.e., type II and type IV. As a result, the confusion on the RS-nomenclature has been concluded to appear within the RS-stereogenic relationships. Such a new viewpoint of stereogenicity and chirality as described in the present paper provides us with a methodology for restructuring stereochemistry.