Letter
Rhodium-Catalyzed Enantioselective Anti-Markovnikov
Hydroformylation of α‑Substituted Acryl Acid Derivatives
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ABSTRACT: Rhodium-catalyzed asymmetric anti-Markovnikov hydroformylation of α-substituted acrylates/acrylamides has been
developed. By employing the Rh/(S,S)-DTBM-YanPhos complex, a series of β-chiral linear aldehydes were obtained in high yields
(up to 94% yield) and high enantioselectivities (up to 96% ee). The utility of this methodology is demonstrated by a gram-scale
reaction and a concise synthetic route to chiral γ-butyrolactone.
asymmetric hydroformylation of 1,1-disubstituted olefins has
been far less established.
wing to the efficient formation of chiral aldehydes in an
Oatom-economic manner, enantioselective hydroformyla-
tion has attracted great attention in both academia and
industry, and a great deal of efforts have been made in this
field.1 As a result, a variety of privileged ligands for asymmetric
hydroformylation (AHF) of monosubstituted and 1,2-disub-
stituted alkenes, such as Binaphos,2 bis(diazaphospholane)
(BDP),3 YanPhos,4 Ph-BPE,5 Chiraphite,6 Bobphos,7 and
Bettiphos,8 have been developed, giving α-chiral aldehydes in
good yields with high enantioselectivities, which have greatly
promoted the development of asymmetric hydroformylation.
However, most of these ligands were incapable of catalyzing
1,1-disubstituted alkenes to the corresponding β-chiral linear
aldehydes (as indicated by Keulemans’ empirical rule),9
although they performed very well on AHF of monosub-
stituted and 1,2-disubstituted alkenes. To date, the inves-
tigations on AHF of 1,1-disubstituted alkenes are rather
limited10 due to the low reactivity derived from the steric
hindrance standing on the same side of the double bond and
the low enantioselectivity derived from the inability of the
chiral catalyst to differentiate the two enantiotopic faces of the
substrates.
With respect to asymmetric hydroformylation, our group is
devoted to addressing some long-standing tough problems in
AHF by the development of new chiral ligands. Recently, our
group designed and synthesized a series of (S,S)-YanPhos,
which showed high activity and selectivity on unfunctionalized
1,1-disubstituted alkenes.4g,i Given the very similar stereo-
control model, we believe that (S,S)-YanPhos may also have
good performance in asymmetric hydroformylation of
functionalized 1,1-disubstituted olefins, providing an efficient
approach to 1,4-dicarbonyl compounds, which are widely
occurring in biologically active molecules and active
pharmaceutical ingredients (Figure 1).12 With this thought in
mind, we investigated the asymmetric hydroformylation of α-
substituted acryl acid derivatives.
On the basis of previous studies, 1a was chosen as the
standard substrate to optimize reaction conditions (Table 1).
Initially, several representative ligands in AHF and in the
asymmetric hydrogenation area, such as (S)-BINAP, Xuphos,
(S,S)-Me-Duphos, and Walphos, were tested (Figure 2).
Disappointingly, all of them exhibited low activities in this
transformation and afforded target product 2a with low
enantiomeric excess (ee). When (S)-Binapine was employed,
only a racemic hydrogenation product was generated (entry 5).
In 2011, Buchwald and co-workers reported their pioneering
work in Rh-catalyzed AHF of functionalized 1,1-disubstituted
olefins and successfully synthesized a series of β-chiral linear
aldehydes from α-alkyl acrylates by using a Rh/BenzP*
catalytic system.11 However, the substrate scope is limited,
and only bulky α-branched alkyl-substituted acrylates can
afford target products with high yields and high ee’s (up to
91% yield, 94% ee); hence, the general and efficient
Received: December 23, 2019
© XXXX American Chemical Society
Org. Lett. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
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