Rhodium complexes monodentate tertiary phosphine

During the late 1960s, Homer et al. [13] and Knowles and Sabacky [14] independently found that a chiral monodentate tertiary phosphine, in the presence of a rhodium complex, could provide enantioselective induction for a hydrogenation, although the amount of induction was small [15-20]. The chiral phosphine ligand replaced the triphenylphosphine in a Wilkinson-type catalyst [10, 21, 22]. At about this time, it was also found that [Rh(COD)2]+ or [Rh(NBD)2]+ could be used as catalyst precursors, without the need to perform ligand exchange reactions [23]. 

Knowles [1] and Homer [2] independently discovered homogeneous asymmetric catalysts based on rhodium complexes bearing a chiral monodentate tertiary phosphine. Continued efforts in this field have produced hundreds of asymmetric catalysts with a plethora of chiral ligands [7], dominated by chelating bisphosphines, that are highly active and enantioselective. These catalysts are beginning to rival biocatalysis in organic synthesis. The evolution of these catalysts has been chronicled in several reviews [8 13]. 

There is an extensive chemistry of tertiary phosphine rhodium(III) complexes. However, there are comparatively few complexes of monodentate tertiary arsines, although the complexes of ditertiary arsines are more numerous. There are virtually no tertiary stibine complexes. The two main preparative routes to the complexes described in this section are (i) direct reaction pf the ligands with rhodium trichloride, which usually yields trichloro complexes and (ii) oxidative addition to rhodium(I) tertiary phosphine complexes, which gives rise to more diverse products of the type [RhXYZ(PRj) ], Metathetical reactions on the complexes prepared by either method (i) or (ii) have been used to prepare most of the remaining compounds. 

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