Standard roles process focus

Chiral epoxides frequently play a key role as intermediates in organic synthesis and the development of methods for the catalytic asymmetric synthesis of such compounds therefore remains an area of intensive research. Methods have focused principally on the asymmetric electrophilic oxidation of alkenes and good enantioselectivity has been achieved [1]. An alternative to oxidative processes for the synthesis of epoxides is the reaction of sulfur ylides with aldehydes and ketones [2,3,4,5,6]. Sulfur ylide epoxidation is a carbon-carbon bond forming reaction and is complementary to oxidative methods. The standard conditions for this reaction utilize the original Corey method treatment of a sulfonium salt with a strong base in the presence of or followed by the addition of an aldehyde... 

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