Enantioselective Hydrogenation of Unfunctionalized Alkenes

This chapter reviews the development of enantioselective hydrogenation of unfunctionalized alkenes using five types of catalysts ... 

During recent years, substantial progress has been made in the hydrogenation of unfunctionalized alkenes. With iridium complexes derived from chiral phos-phino-oxazolines and related ligands, excellent enantioselectivities and high TON/TOF values can now be obtained for a wide range of unfunctionalized olefins. Most substrates studied to date have at least one aryl substituent at the... 

The Payne system has been employed in the presence of antibodies to effect catalytic enantioselective epoxidation of unfunctionalized alkenes.144 Interestingly, Chen and co-workers145 have discovered that acetamide, at a slightly acidic pH in the presence of hydrogen peroxide, can be employed for the epoxidation of alkenes (Figure 2.44).145... 

The highest enantioselectivity in the hydrogenation of unfunctionalized tri-substituted alkenes has been achieved with catalyst 14 a. The same catalyst was also used to hydrogenate a,/ -unsaturated phosphonates with enantiomeric excesses (ee) of 70 to 94% [8]. 

Recently, a breakthrough in the hydrogenation of unfunctionalized olefins was made [51]. For the first time, high enantioselectivities with purely alkyl-substituted alkenes such as 72-74 could be achieved using pyridine-phosphinite catalysts 75 and 76. 

The development of chiral hydrogenation catalysts for unfunctionalized alkenes also allows enantioselective hydrogenation of functionalized olefins where the functionality in the molecule is remote from the double bond. A series of oxazoline-, imidazoline- and pyridine-derived catalysts have been screened for the hydrogenation of unsaturated derivatives of vitamin E (Scheme 30.3). Hy-... 

Cpsymmetric organolanthanide complexes exhibit moderate to good enantioselectivities in the hydrogenation and deuteration of styrene and 2-phenyl-1-butene.433 Cationic iridium-phosphanodihydrooxazole complexes are more efficient catalysts for the asymmetric hydrogenation of unfunctionalized aryl-substituted alkenes. The best catalyst (42) gives high yield (>99%) and excellent enantioselectivity (97% ee) in the hydrogenation of ( )-l,2-diphenyl-l-propene 434... 

Finally, the phosphinite-oxazole catalyst 29 (Fig. 29.16) was recently reported and used to hydrogenate a series of functionalized and unfunctionalized alkenes [31]. It was anticipated that the planar oxazole unit and the fused ring system would improve the enantioselectivity compared to the PHOX catalyst by increasing rigidity in the six-membered chelating ring [32]. Indeed, these catalysts... 

Tetrasubstituted alkenes are challenging substrates for enantioselective hydrogenation because of their inherently low reactivity. Crabtree showed that it was possible to hydrogenate unfunctionalized tetrasubstituted alkenes with iridium catalysts [46]. Among the iridium catalysts described in the previous section, several were found to be sufficiently reactive to achieve full conversion with al-kene 77 (Table 30.14). However, the enantioselectivities were significantly lower than with trisubstituted olefins, and higher catalyst loadings were necessary. 

The effect of structural variation and the use of different caboxylate salts as cocatalysts was investigated by Pietikainen . The epoxidation reactions were performed with the chiral Mn(III)-salen complexes 173 depicted in Scheme 93 using H2O2 or urea hydrogen peroxide as oxidants and unfunctionalized alkenes as substrates. With several soluble carboxylate salts as additives, like ammonium acetate, ammonium formate, sodium acetate and sodium benzoate, good yields (62-73%) and moderate enantioselectivities (ee 61-69%) were obtained in the asymmetric epoxidation of 1,2-dihydronaphthalene. The results were better than with Ai-heterocycles like Ai-methylimidazole, ferf-butylpyridine. 

Asymmetric Hydrogenation. Asymmetric hydrogenation with good enantio-selectivity of unfunctionalized prochiral alkenes is difficult to achieve.144 145 Chiral rhodium complexes, which are excellent catalysts in the hydrogenation of activated multiple bonds (first, in the synthesis of a-amino acids by the reduction of ol-N-acylamino-a-acrylic acids), give products only with low optical yields.144 146-149 The best results ( 60% ee) were achieved in the reduction of a-ethylstyrene by a rhodium catalyst with a diphosphinite ligand.150 Metallocene complexes of titanium,151-155 zirconium,155-157 and lanthanides158 were used in recent studies to reduce the disubstituted C—C double bond with medium enantioselectivity. 

Hydrogenation is now the most utilized homogeneous catalytic reaction in process chemistry for the synthesis of enantioenriched material. The scope of highly enantioselective hydrogenation is spectacular. It ranges from olefins and ketones functionalized with ligating substituents to unfunctionalized alkenes and ketones. Examples of the asymmetric... 

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