Copper salen, catalysis

Like BINOL, salicylaldehyde imines have become very important in asymmetric catalysis and a variety of polydentate ligands prepared from chiral monoamines and diamines are employed in oxidation reactions, carbenoid reactions and Lewis acid catalyzed reactions. As in the previous section, this section emphasizes the effect of the phenol moiety on the asymmetric catalysis. An imine derived from a chiral 1-phenethylamine and salicylaldehyde was employed in the copper catalyzed asymmetric cyclopropanation by Nozaki, Noyori and coworkers in 1966, which is the first example of the asymmetric catalysis in a homogeneous system . Salicylaldehyde imines with ethylenediamine (salen) have been studied extensively by Jacobsen and Katsuki and their coworkers since 1990 in asymmetric catalysis. Jacobsen and coworkers employed the ligands prepared from chiral 1,2-diamines and Katsuki and coworkers sophisticated ligands possess chirality not only at the diamine moiety but also at the 3,3 -positions. 

The first example of asymmetric organometallic catalysis outside the area of polymer chemistry was the cyclopropanation of alkenes as described by Nozaki, Noyori et al. in 1966 [17]. The chiral catalyst used was a salen-copper complex 3 (Scheme 3), giving a maximum enantioselectivity of 10% ee. These low but well-established values initiated further research in this area. Later, Aratani et al. initiated the tuning of the structure of the copper catalyst at Sumitomo [18]. They were able to reach quite high level of enantioselectivity with copper catalyst 4. For example, 2,2-dimethyl-cyclopropane carboxylic acid was obtained in 92% ee, and subsequently used in a process to prepare cilastatine. 

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