Rhodium enamide

Since the submission of this article, further work by Halpern and co-workers (21) has led to the description of a chiraphos rhodium enamide crystal structure. 

Figure 1. Rhodium enamide complexes derived from (a) bis-diphenylphosphiho-ethane and (b) DIP AMP with methyl z-a-benzamidocinnamate phosphorus-31 NMR spectra, MeOH, 25°C.

Typical square-planar rhodium-olefin complexes such as acetylacetonates (48) have a stoichiometry of two coordinated olefins per metal-atom. Since chelating olefins are bidentate in their cationic rhodium biphosphine complexes, it would be surprising if bis-olefin complexes were never found under hydrogenation conditions. It seems clear, in fact, that they can be the major coordinated species under certain conditions. Thus examples of 2 1 rhodium enamide complexes with biz-diphenyl-phosphinopropane have been observed (49), although the majority of cases involve a8-unsaturated acids co-complexed with DIOP. 

In 2006, Berens et al. reported the synthesis of novel benzothiophene-based DuPHOS analogues, which gave excellent levels of enantioselectivity when applied as the ligands to the asymmetric rhodium-catalysed hydrogenation of various olefins, such as dehydroamino acid derivatives, enamides and itaco-nates (Scheme 8.10). ... 

Several S/N ligands have also been investigated for the asymmetric hydrogenation of prochiral olefins. Thus, asymmetric enamide hydrogenations have been performed in the presence of S/N ligands and rhodium or ruthenium catalysts by Lemaire et al., giving enantioselectivities of up to 70% ee. Two... 

Cyclic tetrasubstituted enamides have been sucessfully reduced using both rhodium [15e] and ruthenium [15b,d] catalysis (Scheme 9.34). 

The reduction of a structurally simple acyclic tetrasubstituted enamide has been achieved [15c], also using rhodium catalysis (Scheme 9.35). 

Other phosphine systems have been reported in which four phenyl groups are oriented around a rhodium center (249-254). They all hydrogenate Z-enamides efficiently, and intermediates with a conformation of edge-face phenyls seem plausible in each case. The 2S,4S-4-diphenyl-... 

In this reaction, a rhodium atom complexed to a chiral diphosphine ligand ( P—P ) catalyzes the hydrogenation of a prochiral enamide, with essentially complete enan-tioselectivity and limiting kinetic rates exceeding hundreds of catalyst turnovers per second. While precious metals such as Ru, Rh, and Ir are notably effective for catalysis of hydrogenation reactions, many other transition-metal and lanthanide complexes exhibit similar potency. 

A crucial achievement significantly stimulated the development of the investigation in the field of homogeneous enantioselective catalysis. The Knowles group established a method for the industrial synthesis of I-DOPA, a drug used for the treatment of Parkinson s disease. The key step of the process is the enantiomeric hydrogenation of a prochiral enamide, and this reaction is efficiently catalyzed by the air-stable rhodium complex [Rh(COD)((PP)-CAMP)2]BF4 (Scheme 1.12). 

The use of the diphosphine PHANEPHOS (see Scheme 1.24) permitted Bar-gon, Brown and colleagues to detect and characterize a dihydrido intermediate in the hydrogenation of the enamide MAC by a rhodium-based catalyst The PH IP NMR technique was employed, and showed one of the hydrogen atoms to be agostic between the rhodium center and the /1-carbon of the substrate [85]. By using the same diphosphine and technique it was also possible to detect two diastereomers of the dihydride depicted in Scheme 1.25, which may also be detected using conventional NMR measurements [86]. 

Complexes containing one binap ligand per ruthenium (Fig. 3.5) turned out to be remarkably effective for a wide range of chemical processes of industrial importance. During the 1980s, such complexes were shown to be very effective, not only for the asymmetric hydrogenation of dehydroamino adds [42] - which previously was rhodium s domain - but also of allylic alcohols [77], unsaturated acids [78], cyclic enamides [79], and functionalized ketones [80, 81] - domains where rhodium complexes were not as effective. Table 3.2 (entries 3-5) lists impressive TOF values and excellent ee-values for the products of such reactions. The catalysts were rapidly put to use in industry to prepare, for example, the perfume additive citronellol from geraniol (Table 3.2, entry 5) and alkaloids from cyclic enamides. These developments have been reviewed by Noyori and Takaya [82, 83]. 

DuPhos. The exception for rhodium-catalyzed reductions are CnrPhos and BPE-4 [168, 264—268]. MalPhos has proven useful for the reductions of yS-acylamino-acrylates [260]. The ferrocene hybrid (FerroTANE) was referred to earlier (see Section 23.4.1) [167, 222]. The PennPhos ligand is useful for the reductions of cyclic enamides and enol acetates both classes of compounds are difficult for DuPhos itself to reduce with high selectivity [269, 270]. 

Rhodium-catalyzed hydrogenation of enamides has been successfully performed using monodentate phosphites 17, with enantioselectivities of up to 95% being obtained [53]. The rate of hydrogenation is low in order to reach full conversion with a SCR of 500, hydrogenation is performed at a pressure of 60 bar for 20 h. The use of ligand 17 am in the rhodium-catalyzed hydrogenation of aromatic enamides resulted in ee-values of up to 95%. 

Rhodium-catalyzed enantioselective hydrogenation of N-acyl enamides provides access to enantioenriched amides which can be hydrolyzed to the free amines. The synthesis of the substtates is considerably less sttaightforward than that of N-acyl dehydroamino acids, which explains the smaller number of reports devoted to N-acyl enamides. 

The enamide dihydride intermediate that precedes migratory insertion has proved elusive, despite one earlier claim where the evidence is incomplete and possibly not correctly interpreted [36]. Hydrogenation by rhodium complexes of... 

---