Catalytic enantioselective alkylation principles

Principles. How shall we proceed toward catalytic asymmetric induction Scheme 5 illustrates a possible way to achieve enantioselective alkylation by using a small amount of chiral source. Under certain conditions, the presence of a protic chiral auxiliary HX can catalyze the addition of organometallic reagent, R2M, to a prochiral carbonyl substrate by way of RMX. To obtain sufficient chiral efficiency, the anionic ligand X must have a three-dimensional structure that allows differentiation between the diastereomeric transition states of the alkyl transfer step. In addition, unlike in stoichiometric reactions, the rate of... 

The Zr-catalyzed asymmetric alkylation shown in Eq. (2) [8] illustrates two important principles (1) The catalytic asymmetric protocol can be readily applied to the synthesis of non-aryl imines to generate homochiral amines that cannot be prepared by any of the alternative imine or enamine hydrogenation protocols. (2) The catalytic amine synthesis involves a three-component process that includes the in situ formation of the imine substrate, followed by its asymmetric alkylation. This strategy can also be readily applied to the preparation of arylamines. The three-component enantioselective amine synthesis suggests that such a procedure maybe used to synthesize libraries of homochiral amines in a highly efficient and convenient fashion. 

---