Phenylacetylene asymmetric addition

Since the pioneering studies of asymmetric catalysis with core-functionalized dendrimers reported by Brunner (88) and Bolm (89), several noteworthy investigations have been described in this field. Some examples of the dendritic effects observed in enantioselective catalysis with dendrimers having active sites in the core were discussed in Section II, such as the catalytic experiments with TADDOL-cored dendrimers described by Seebach et al. (59) the asymmetric addition of Et2Zn to aldehydes catalyzed by core-functionalized phenylacetylene-containing dendrimers reported by Hu et al (42)-, the asymmetric hydrogenation investigations with (R)-BINAP core-functionalized dendrimers synthesized by Fan et al. (36) or the results... 

Scheme 4.2 Asymmetric addition of phenylacetylene to various aromatic ketones using quinine as a chiral ligand.

Copper complexes of chiral Pybox (pyridine-2,6-bis(oxazoline))-type ligands have been found to catalyze the enantioselective alkynylation of imines [26]. Moreover, the resultant optically active propargylamines are important intermediates for the synthesis of a variety of nitrogen compounds [27], as well as being a common structural feature of many biologically active compounds and natural products. Portnoy prepared PS-supported chiral Pybox-copper complex 35 via a five-step solid-phase synthetic sequence [28]. Cu(l) complexes of the polymeric Pybox ligands were then used as catalysts for the asymmetric addition of phenylacetylene to imine 36, as shown in Scheme 3.11. tBu-Pybox gave the best enantioselectivity of 83% ee in the synthesis of 37. 

BINOL is an effective ligand in the titanium-catalysed asymmetric addition of alkynylzinc reagents to aldehydes. Aromatic, aliphatic and a,P-unsaturated aldehydes such as (6.35) are converted into the propargylic alcohol with 91-99% ee using the alkynylzinc, generated from phenylacetylene and diethylzinc. Carriera and coworkers have developed an enantioselective alkynylzinc addition that is also... 

Carreira and co-workers developed a highly efficient enantioselective addition of terminal alkynes to aldehydes giving propargyl alcohols by the mediation of zinc tri-flate and N-methylephedrine [17]. This reaction serves as a convenient and powerful synthetic route to a wide variety of enantioenriched allenes via propargyl alcohols. Dieter and Yu applied this alkynylation to the asymmetric synthesis of allenes (Scheme 4.12) [18]. Reaction of phenylacetylene with isobutyraldehyde afforded the propargyl alcohol in 80% yield with 99% ee, which was mesylated to 49 in quantitative yield. Reaction of 49 with the cyanocuprate 50 afforded the desired allene 51 with 83% ee. 

NiCh-catalyzed hydrophosphinylation of triple bonds in acetonitrile gave excellent yields and an impressive reduction in the reaction time from 1-38 h to 1-10 min [78]. Stereoselective cis addition to the triple bond was always observed but on using compounds with an asymmetrically substituted triple bond, for example phenylacetylene (120), two regioisomers were obtained 122 and 123. In this reaction the selectivity was enhanced by use of microwave irradiation (Scheme 5.34). 

Use of a monosubstituted acetylenes, such as phenylacetylene, in the homo Diels-Alder reaction results in chiral deltacyclenes, which contain a total of 6 asymmetric carbon atoms. However, as a consequence of the two and only two different addition modes of a monosubstituted acetylene to norbomadiene, the deltacyclene is formed as a pair of enantiomers. 

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