Influence of deuteration and fluorination on the supramolecular architecture of pyridine N-oxide crystals.

To understand how deuterium and fluorine substituents influence the supramolecular architecture of pyridine N-oxide crystals, the crystal structure of 3-fluoropyridine N-oxide (PNO-3F) was determined and the crystal packing motives of non-deuterated pyridine-N-oxide (PNO), partial-deuterated pyridine-N-oxide (PNO-D) and PNO-3F were analyzed based on ab initio quantum-chemical calculations of the intermolecular interaction energy, using the MP2/6-311G(d,p) method. The appearance of the weak-directing substituents deuterium and fluorine leads to significant changes in the crystal organization of the isotropic packing of PNO molecules.