Hydrogenation with phosphine bound catalysts

Table 6. Hydrogenation with Phosphine-Bound Catalysts... 

The solution to this problem has been to attach these catalysts to polymer supports. The ideal polymer-bound catalyst must satisfy a formidable list of requirements. It should be easily prepared from low cost materials. The support must be compatible with the solvent system employed, and be chemically and thermally stable under the reaction conditions. The catalyst should show minimal losses in reaction rate or selectivity when bound to the support, and should be able to be recycled many times without loss of activity. Finally, the interactions between the catalytic site and the support must be either negligible or beneficial. The development of polymer supported rhodium-phosphine catalysts for the asymmetric hydrogenation of amino acid precursors illustrates the incremental process which has led to supports which approach the ideal support. 

The NP2 unit and the resultant achiral [Rh(NP2)(NBD)] moiety can also be attached easily at a specific site in a protein. The protein structure then provides the chirality required for enantioselective hydrogenation. Thus, hydrogenation of a-acetamidoacrylic acid to A/ -acetylalanine catalyzed by [Rh(NP2)(NBD)] bound to avidin at RT and 1.5 atm of H2 showed —40% S enantiomeric excess. Although these hydrogenation results with avidin are modest, it does demonstrate that asymmetric synthesis is accomplished by the -phosphine rhodium catalyst attached covalently to a protein. 

Since the researcher normally looks to the chemistry of soluble complexes in designing polymer-bound catalysts, it is notable that some areas that have proven fruitful in homogeneous catalysis have been omitted from investigations using polymer-bound catalysts. One of these areas concerns the reactions of arenes. Benzene, for example, may be hydrogenated with homogeneous cobalt phosphite and ruthenium phosphine complexes, but the corresponding supported versions are not reported. Aryl halides may be carboxylated in the presence of a soluble palladium catalyst ... 

Hydrogenation of iV-acyl a-amino acids in 87-91% ee has been accomplished with Rh bound to copolymers (43) with chiral phosphine ligands, as shown in Scheme 16. The same % ee was obtained with Rh catalysts prepared from analogous soluble ligands. Hydrophilic poly(2-hydroxy-ethyl methacrylate) and poly(iV,iV-dimethylacrylamide) provided polar environments for the hydrogenations. The chiral polymeric catalyst can be recycled. Earlier studies with polymers based on chiral biphosphine monomer (44) showed that polar comonomers were required for high % ee catalysis. ... 

Tertiary phosphine groups with long alkyl chains bound directly to phosphorus or substituted at the para position of triphenylphosphine give rise to a range of interesting and potentially useful complexes. In particular these may be used to prepare polyolefin hydrogenation catalysts based on platinum(II) and palladium(II) complexes that are both more active and more selective towards reduction to monoolefins than previous catalysts based on these systems. The platinum(II) complexes are better than the palladium(II) complexes. Additionally the new phosphines are more effective than triphenylphosphine in promoting the oxidative addition of methyl iodide to trans- [Rh(PR3)2Cl(CO)]. 

The homogeneous chiral phosphine/DPEN-Ru catalyst can be immobilized by use of polymer-bound phosphines such as polystyrene-anchored BINAP (APB-BINAP) [57, 98], Poly-Nap [99], and poly(BINOL-BINAP) [100], poly(BINAP) [101]. These complexes hydrogenate T-acetonaphthone and acetophenone with S/C of 1000-10 000 under 8 10 atm H2 to give the corresponding secondary alcohols in 84-98% e.e. The recovered complexes are repeatedly used without significant loss of reactivity and enantioselectivity. Immobilization allows the easy separation of catalyst from reaction mixture, recovery, and reuse. These advantages attract much attention in combinatorial synthesis. 

---