The six carbon environments are assigned as follows, with chemical shifts at the centres of the fluorine-split multiplets:The supplied carbon-13 spectrum is interpreted as proton-decoupled NMR, as indicated by its unsplit ethoxy signals. Proton decoupling removes C–H splitting but leaves C–F scalar spin-spin coupling. Three equivalent spin- fluorine nuclei give each resolved quartet its intensity pattern. The carbonyl's much smaller four-bond C–F interaction is unresolved in the plotted spectrum; “singlet” describes what is observed, rather than proving an exactly zero interaction.
The wide quartet is centred at ppm. The other two centres are and ppm. The signal near ppm is the deuterated chloroform solvent, not another carbon of the analyte. The structure labels skip : the ethoxy methylene is .
There are two carbon-placement isomers, represented by the cyclic base sequences and . The carbon vertices are adjacent in the first and separated by one boron vertex in the second. Rotation or reversal of a sequence does not produce another constitutional isomer.
Each arrangement has a reflection symmetry that exchanges a pair of boron sites while leaving the third distinct. Consequently each can give two environments, with site populations , in a proton-decoupled NMR spectrum. This assumes that the hydrogen and carbonyl arrangements preserve, or rapidly average to, the corresponding skeletal symmetry. Two peaks alone neither choose between the two skeletons nor establish a unique hydrogen arrangement; accidental overlap or fluxionality can also reduce the number of observed signals.