Description of chiral tetrahedral molecules via an Aufbau approach

Abstract

We propose a predictive building-up of tetrahedral molecules, based on a previously derived chirality index, which characterizes a tetrahedral molecule, with n chiral centers, as achiral, diastereoisomer, or enantiomer as a function of the observed inversions (at most one for each center) under rotation and superimposition to its mirror immage. The set of rules which is identified allows the classification of the new molecule, obtained by the addition of another chiral center, by the determination of the selection rule with respect to the added center.