Aza- and carbobicyclic compounds possess favorable pharmaceutical properties, but they are difficult to access. Herein, we demonstrate an unprecedented organocatalytic two component six-step chemodivergent domino reaction, which provides a straightforward, sustainable and atom economical route to difficult-to-access complex bicyclic architectures: azabicycles and carbobicycles, whose ratios can be controlled by the applied electrophiles and catalysts. Detailed NMR and X-ray studies on the structures and relative stereochemistry of selected compounds are presented. Mechanistic investigations of the chemoselective branching step have been carried out with DFT methods in conjunction with semiempirical van der Waals interactions. This new domino reaction opens up a new vista of generating, in a single operation, new bioactive compounds with strong antiviral properties (EC₅₀ up to 0.071 μm for human cytomegalovirus (HCMV)) outperforming clinically used ganciclovir (EC₅₀ 2.6 μm).

Bifunctional thiourea- or sulfonamide-derived tertiary amines catalyze the enantioselective nitro-Michael addition of N-unprotected 3-substituted 2-oxindoles to nitrostyrene in up to 99 % yields, 94:6 er, and 87:13 dr. Overcoming the necessity to introduce and remove activating or protecting groups at the nitrogen moiety leads to a reduction of energy use, costs, and waste. Transition-state geometries for the formation of all possible stereoisomers in the nitro-Michael addition of N-unprotected 3-substituted 2-oxindole to nitrostyrene catalyzed by Takemoto’s tertiary amine–thiourea are calculated. It is shown that the relative positions and binding patterns of the reactants and the catalyst molecule are largely determined by van der Waals interactions.

Novel κ³-N,N,O ligands tend to form 1D coordination polymer strands. Deposition of 1D structures on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) was achieved from diluted solutions and polymer strands have been studied on HOPG by AFM/STM. Single strands were mapped by STM and their electronic properties were subsequently characterized by current imaging tunneling spectroscopy (CITS). Periodic density functional calculations simulating a polymer strand deposited on a HOPG surface are in agreement with the zig-zag structure indicated by experimental findings. Both the observed periodicity and the Zn–Zn distances can be reproduced in the simulations. Van der Waals interactions were found to play a major role for the geometry of the isolated polymer strand, for the adsorption geometry on HOPG, as well as for the adsorption energy.