Heterogeneous chiral catalysis

Surface faceting may be particularly significant in chiral heterogeneous catalysis, particularly in the N i/P-ketoester system. The adsorption of tartaric add and glutamic acid onto Ni is known to be corrosive and it is also established that modifiers are leached into solution during both the modification and the catalytic reaction [28]. The preferential formation of chiral step-kink arrangements by corrosive adsorption could lead to catalytically active and enantioselective sites at step-kinks with no requirement for the chiral modifier to be present on the surface. 

In principle, sites a, IT, and c need not be association sites as depicted by Ogston but could be steric sites that form obstructions such that the adsorbed molecule is chirally directed. Only one active site is actually required providing the remaining two sites (protuberances or cavities) are different from each other and from the active site that catalyzes the reaction. They could be identical providing they are not symmetrically oriented with respect to the active site (not an isosceles triangle). These are the basic concepts for a chiral environment on a surface and they lead to the three basic methods for creating chiral surfaces in heterogeneous catalysis. 

A naturally occurring chiral metal structure is a screw dislocation (Fig. 3.4),11 which is a chiral arrangement observed in metal crystals but never resolved and tested for enantioselective heterogeneous catalysis. A possible method of making chiral arrangements like screw dislocations is by the glancing angle deposition technique, which can produce chiral sculptured thin films.12... 

E. Polastro, in G. Jannes, V. Dubois (Eds.), Chiral Reactions in Heterogeneous Catalysis. Plenum Press, New York, 1995, p. 5. 

From the chemical point of view, in diasteieoselective syntheses, several kinds of reactions like hydrogenation [273,277-286], hydrogenolysis [287-293], isomerization [294], and epoxidation [295-300] are involved. Hydrogenation is the most important application of heterogeneous catalysis because of its potential to produce a wide variety of chiral functional groups. 

Rasch Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 1994, 33, 2144. (c) H.-U. Blaser, B. Pugin In Chiral Reactions in Heterogeneous Catalysis,... 

H. U. Blaser, B. Pugin, M. Studer, Enantioselective heterogeneous catalysis academic and industrial challenges, in D. E. de Vos, I. F. J. Vankelecom, P. A. Jacobs (Eds.), Chiral Catalyst Immobilization and Recycling, Wiley-VCFI, Weinheim, 2000, p. 1. 

From a synthetic point of view, there are a few reaction types catalyzed by chiral heterogeneous catalysts which are useful for preparative chemists. But it is also evident that the scope of most catalytic systems is rather narrow and very high substrate specificity is observed. Compared to homogeneous or bio-catalysis, enantioselectivities are usually lower but there are exceptions. 

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