A series of 2,3-O-cyclopentylidene C-glycoside analogs in which the furanose ring has been replaced with a N-hydroxypyrrolidine have been prepared. A structural study of these tricyclic compounds and the aminoxyl radicals thereof has been carried out using variable temperature 1H NMR, X-ray diffraction, molecular dynamics and EPR spectroscopy. Both types of compounds, N-hydroxypyrrolidines and pyrrolidine N-oxyls, fundamentally prefer - in solutions- N-endo conformations over the alternate, N-exo forms found by X-ray diffraction studies and computed to be more stable by molecular dynamics.

The structure of the ground and lowest two excited states of H₂NO have been determined in large scale configuration interaction calculations using a multiconfiguration self-consistent description of the molecular orbitals. These treatments are based on a systematic building of the correlation contribution which has been designed to account for the characteristics of the nitroxide group. This approach shows that the aminoxyl functional group is more than a three electron group shared by two atoms, but, in fact, a nine electron entity. Our best estimate of the geometry of the ground electronic state, obtained after second-order configuration interaction using a large basis of atomic natural orbitals, is pyramidal. However, since the potential depth between 0° and 40° is lower or of the same order of magnitude as the estimated inversion frequency, the conclusion that this molecule behaves like a planar system is totally justified. The structure of the excited (η−π*) and (π−π*) states have been determined and the transitions energies are in accordance with the experimental results on the highly substituted stable nitroxide radicals.