Alkyl aryl sulphoxides chiral

Partial photochemical decomposition of racemic alkyl aryl sulphoxides in the presence of chiral amines as sensitizers gave non-decomposed sulphoxides in optically active form with optical purity of about 3%339. The report340 on the use of cholesteric liquid crystalline reaction media to change the enantiomeric composition of racemic sulphoxides at high temperatures could not be reproduced341. 

Earlier, attention was drawn to a novel application of the oxidative desulphurization reaction which occurs between sulphoxides and phosphonothioic acid esters. When 1 mol of the thio acid is allowed to remain in contact with 2 mol of a racemic methyl alkyl sulphoxide for 2 weeks at room temperature, the unreacted sulphoxide is found to be optically active, a result which represents asymmetric deoxygenation of the sulphoxide. The chemical course of the reaction is consistent with Scheme 31. Since the appearance of the initial results, corrections have been made to the configurations of the phosphorus-containing substrates, and hence the stereochemical details and mechanistic arguments require reappraisal neverthless, the fact remains that (-t-)-sulphoxides are obtained by the use of the ( S)-(-)-acids, R (R O)P(S)OH , a feature which can be used to determine the chirality of other like acids. Dialkyl and alkyl aryl sulphoxides are also known to form diastereoisomeric complexes with (5)-(-)-/er butylphenylphosphinothioic acid, distinguishable by their NMR spectra, and through such complexation it is possible to assess the enantiomeric composition of the sulphoxide " ... 

In contrast to the asymmetric procedures discussed above, the metal-catalyzed oxidation of alkyl aryl sulphides by t-butylhydroperoxide carried out in a chiral alcohol gives rise to chiral sulphoxides of low optical purity290 (e.e. 0.6 9.8%). Similarly, a very low asymmetric induction was noted when prochiral sulphides were oxidized by sodium metaperiodate in chiral alcohols as solvents291. 

The Andersen sulphoxide synthesis is general in scope and a large number of chiral alkyl aryl and diaryl sulphoxides became available from (—)-(S)-276 and other optically active sulphinates343-346 (Table 16). 

The conversion of sulphides into sulphoxides is another transformation that takes a non-chiral compound to a chiral entity. Once again the oxidation can be accomplished using a whole-cell system or an enzyme. Aryl alkyl sulphides are oxidised by Corynebacterium equi to give (/ )-sulphoxides in good to excellent optical purity (Scheme 4.29). Yields can be variable, one problem being overoxidation of the sulphoxide to the corresponding sulphone. This problem is circumvented by the use of an isolated enzyme, horseradish peroxidase, but unfortunately the optical purities of the products are lower. 

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