Chiral carbosilane dendrimers

A stochiometric approach was applied by Van Koten and co-workers [29], who used chiral carbosilane dendrimers as soluble supports in the in situ ester enolate-imine condensation in the synthesis of /Mactams (e.g. 19, Scheme 20). The formation of the /Mactam products proceeded with high trans selectivity, and with the same level of stereoinduction as was earlier established in reactions without the dendritic supports, (i.e. the use of the enantiopure dendritic support did not affect the enantioselectivity of the C-C bond formation). After the reaction, the dendrimer species could be separated from the product by precipitation or GPC techniques and reused again. 

Table 6 Mesomorphic behavior of the carbosilane dendrimers bearing chiral mesogens (H, I and J)...

The first example of a catalytically active metallodendrimer, having catalytic groups at the periphery, was reported by van Koten, van Leeuwen and coworkers [20]. These authors prepared the nickel(II) complexes containing carbosilane dendrimers, which were successfully employed in the homogeneous regioselective Kharasch addition of polyhalogenoalkanes to the terminal C=C double bonds. Since these early studies there has been a steadily increasing number of dendrimer catalysts which have been synthesized and studied [15]. In this section, the details of peripherally modified chiral dendrimer catalysts for different asymmetric catalytic reactions will be summarized. 

Figure 4.39 The peripherally chiral monophosphine-functionalized carbosilane dendrimers.

Recently, dendrimers, which are hyperbranched macromolecules, were found to be an appropriate support for polymer catalysts, because chiral sites can be designed at the peripheral region of the dendrimers (Scheme 5). Seebach synthesized chiral dendrimer 14, which has TADDOLs on its periphery and used an efficient chiral ligand in the Ti(IV)-promoted enantioselective alkylation [21]. We developed chiral hyperbranched hydrocarbon chain 15 which has six p-ami-no alcohols [22], It catalyzes the enantioselective addition of diethylzinc to aldehydes. We also reported dendritic chiral catalysts with flexible carbosilane backbones [23]. 

Recently, Soai et al. reported the synthesis of series of chiral dendrimer amino alcohol ligands based on PAMAM, hydrocarbon and carbosilane dendritic backbones (Figure 4.31) [99-102]. These chiral dendrimers were used as catalysts for the enantioselective addition of dialkylzincs to aldehydes and N-diphenylphosphi-nylimines (Scheme 4.25). The molecular structures of the dendrimer supports were shown to have a significant influence on the catalytic properties. The negative dendrimer effect for the PAMAM-bound catalysts was considered due to the fact that the nitrogen and oxygen atoms on the dendrimer skeleton could coordinate to zinc. 

In contrast to the PAMAM-bound catalysts, chiral dendrimers based on rigid poly(phenylethyne) and flexible carbosilane backbones without heteroatoms proved to be highly efficient catalysts in such alkylation reactions. Excellent enantioselectivities in the asymmetric addition of dialkylzincs to aldehydes (up to 93% ee) and N-diphenylphosphinyli mines (up to 94% ee) were achieved. 

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