Synthesis of a novel spiro bisphosphinamidite ligand for highly enantioselective hydrogenation

Chiral ligands designed in China

Asymmetric catalysis has become an indispensable and productive field within the Chinese organic chemistry society. The design of chiral ligands is one of the most prominent research areas in this field. Since the late 1990s, Chinese organic chemists have developed numerous chiral ligands possessing novel chiral skeletons and design concepts. Some of these ligands have been widely adopted and can be regarded as ‘privileged ligand’, which have shown excellent performance in many asymmetric catalytic reactions. In this review, we provide an overview of the chiral ligands designed by Chinese scientists with the aim of promoting the development of this area in China and with the hope of encouraging more scientists across the world to use these ligands when designing asymmetric reactions.

Spiro-fused six-membered N-heterocyclic carbene: a new scaffold toward unique properties and activities

A six-membered N-heterocyclic carbene fused with a spiro-scaffold is designed. The new NHC shows stronger σ-donation ability than typical 5-membered NHCs. This property leads to interesting reactivities of this spiro-fused six-membered NHC. For example, the NHC-BF3 Lewis pair complex can be readily prepared by using LiBF4 as the BF3 source, or through a direct bond-reconstruction of the tetrafluoroborate salt NHC·HBF4.

Asymmetric Rhodium-Catalyzed Hydrogenation Meets Gold-Catalyzed Cyclization: Enantioselective Synthesis of 8-Hydroxytetrahydroisoquinolines

Different furyl-substituted (Z)-dehydroamino acid derivatives were hydrogenated with the rhodium/Mandyphos(OMe)-system to give enantiomeric excesses between 80 and 98 %. The absolute configuration of the newly formed stereogenic center was determined by anomalous diffraction to be R. These chiral furyl alanines were transferred into 8-hydroxytetrahydroisoquinolines by employing gold-catalyzed arene synthesis as the key step. During the latter reaction sequence, also including either a propargylation or a reduction, a protection of the hydroxy group, and a subsequent propargylation, no racemization of the stereogenic center was observed. With very electron-rich furans, instead of the 8-hydroxytetrahydroquinolines as products, furans anellated to seven-membered rings with exocyclic C-C double bonds are formed under the same reaction conditions.

Practical synthesis of chiral 9,9′-spirobixanthene-1,1′-diol

A concise four-step synthesis of 9,9'-spirobixanthene-1,1'-diol is reported, featuring a practical preparation at large scale without the use of column chromatography purification. Co-crystallization with N-benzylcinchonidinium chloride and N-benzylquininium chloride rendered the optically pure product in both enantiomers.

Rh-Catalyzed Asymmetric Hydrogenation of Prochiral Olefins with a Dynamic Library of Chiral TROPOS Phosphorus Ligands

A library of 19 chiral tropos phosphorus ligands, based on a flexible (tropos) biphenol unit and a chiral P-bound alcohol (11 phosphites) or secondary amine (8 phosphoramidites), was synthesized. These ligands were screened, individually and as a combination of two, in the rhodium-catalyzed asymmetric hydrogenation of dehydro-alpha-amino acids, dehydro-beta-amino acids, enamides and dimethyl itaconate. ee values up to 98% were obtained for the dehydro-alpha-amino acids, by using the best combination of ligands, a phosphite [4-P(O)2O] and a phosphoramidite [13-P(O)2N]. Kinetic studies of the reactions with the single ligands and with the combination of phosphite [4-P(O)2O] and phosphoramidite [13-P(O)2N] have shown that the phosphite, despite being less enantioselective, promotes the hydrogenation of methyl 2-acetamidoacrylate and methyl 2-acetamidocinnamate faster than the mixture of the same phosphite with the phosphoramidite, while the phosphoramidite alone is much less active. In this way, the reaction was optimized by lowering the phosphite/phosphoramidite ratio (the best ratio is 0.25 equiv phosphite/1.75 equiv phosphoramidite) with a resulting improvement of the product enantiomeric excess. A simple mathematical model for a better understanding of the variation of the enantiomeric excess with the phosphite/phosphoramidite ratio is also presented.