Palladium Catalysis Featuring Attractive Noncovalent Interactions Enabled Highly Enantioselective Access to β-Quaternary δ-Lactams

Cobalt-Catalyzed Enantioselective Reductive Arylation, Heteroarylation, and Alkenylation of Michael Acceptors via an Elementary Mechanism of 1,4-Addition

Cobalt complexes with chiral quinox ligands effectively promote the enantioselective conjugate addition of enones using aryl, heteroaryl, and alkenyl halides and sulfonates. Additionally, a cobalt complex with a strongly donating diphosphine, BenzP*, successfully catalyzes the asymmetric reductive arylation and alkenylation of α,β-unsaturated amides. Both catalytic systems show broad scopes and tolerance of sensitive functional groups. Both reactions can be scaled up with low loadings of cobalt catalysts. Experimental results and density functional theory (DFT) calculations suggest a new mechanism of elementary 1,4-addition of aryl cobalt(I) complexes.

Recent Advances in π-Stacking Interaction-Controlled Asymmetric Synthesis

The π-stacking interaction is one of the most important intramolecular and intermolecular noncovalent interactions in organic chemistry. It plays an important role in stabilizing some structures and transition states in certain reactions via both intramolecular and intermolecular interactions, facilitating different selectivities, such as chemo-, regio-, and stereoselectivities. This minireview focuses on the recent examples of the π-stacking interaction-controlled asymmetric synthesis, including auxiliary-induced asymmetric synthesis, kinetic resolution, asymmetric synthesis of helicenes and heterohelicenes, and multilayer 3D chiral molecules.

Palladium-Catalyzed Asymmetric Conjugate Addition of Arylboronic Acids to α,β-Unsaturated Lactams: Enantioselective Construction of All-Carbon Quaternary Stereocenters in Saturated Nitrogen-Containing Heterocycles

Stereogenic nitrogen-containing heterocycles are ubiquitous in natural products and pharmaceutical compounds, but methods for their enantioselective construction have remained elusive. We report a general method for the asymmetric conjugate addition of arylboronic acids to β-alkyl/aryl α,β-unsaturated lactams that affords chiral β,β-disubstituted lactams. The transformation is operationally simple and air- and moisture-tolerant and uses a commercially available (S)-t-Bu-PyOx ligand. The method is high-yielding (up to 95% yield) and enantioselective (up to 97% ee) for a wide range of arylboronic acids and α,β-unsaturated lactams, including those with different ring sizes.

Asymmetric Hydrogenation of Oximes Synergistically Assisted by Lewis and Brønsted Acids

Due to their low reactivity, difficult enantiocontrol, and proneness to N-O bond cleavage, the catalytic asymmetric hydrogenation of oximes to hydroxylamines has remained a significant challenge. Herein, a Lewis and Brønsted acid cooperation strategy was established for the asymmetric hydrogenation of oximes, providing the corresponding hydroxylamines with up to 95% yield and up to 96% ee. Addition of Lewis and Brønsted acid was crucial to obtain high conversion and enantioselectivity. Mechanistic investigations indicates that the thiourea fragment of the ligand, Lewis acid (In(OTf)₃ or Zn(OAc)₂), as well as the Brønsted acid (l-CSA) played vital roles in the control of reactivity and enantioselectivity of the reaction. In addition, the synthetic elaboration of this transformation was demonstrated by gram scale experiment with retention of the yield and enantioselectivity.