Linking Conformational Flexibility and Kinetics
on the correlation of the degree of enantioselectivity and
the increasing magnitude of DDH° with increasing size of
polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon on the catalyst, they pro-
posed a cation–p activation mechanism, which served to
broaden the scope of enantioselective counterion catalysis.
In contrast, our findings[14j,k] have, for the first time, uncov-
Substituent Effects on 1,3-Diamine-Tethered Guanidine/
Bisthiourea Organocatalysts
Exploratory studies show that drastic enantioswitching can
occur simply as a result of replacing the substituents (R1 and
R2) on the guanidine moiety in 2.[14j,36] These unique features
of the present catalytic system, along with our wish to charac-
terize the chiral recognition processes that take place in these
asymmetric carbon–carbon bond-forming reactions, prompted
us to conduct kinetic analyses using Eyring plots for selected
1,3-diamine-tethered catalysts 2. According to the differential
Eyring treatment,[31,37–39] the relative rates of formation of
(S)-5aa in the reactions are expressed by Equation (1), in
which DDH° represents the differential activation enthalpy
and DDS° represents the differential activation entropy.
ered
a situation where differential activation entropy
(DDS°) controls the outcome of asymmetric hydrogen-
bond-donor catalysis.[32–34] As the entropy term is known to
be tunable by selecting suitable reaction conditions,[14k,35] it
is particularly important to gain insight into the structural
origin of the catalytic action to attain a large magnitude of
differential activation entropy (DDS°). Therefore, we first
carried out structure–activity relationship (SAR) studies on
guanidine/bisthiourea organocatalysts.
The crucial role played by the 1,3-diamine spacer linking
the two centers in 2a is evident from the Eyring plots of the
FC reaction of 3a with 4a catalyzed by 1a with the corre-
sponding 1,2-diamine spacer, at a substrate concentration of
0.025m. As shown in Table 1, 1a showed completely differ-
lnðkS=kRÞ ¼ ꢀDDH°SꢀR=RTþDDS°SꢀR=R
ð1Þ
In accordance with Equation (1), plots of the natural loga-
rithm of the relative rate of formation of (S)-5aa versus re-
ciprocal temperature were fitted to straight lines with good
correlation coefficients (Figure 2).[40] These observations
confirm that a single mechanism is operating in the catalytic
process over the temperature range explored.[38d] An impor-
tant feature is that 2b–g display broadly similar temperature
and concentration profiles in the FC reaction of 3a with 4a.
At less than a threshold concentration, positive values of
Table 1. Temperature profile of the yield in 1a-catalyzed 1,4-type FC re-
actions of 3a with 4a.
DDH°
and DDS°
are obtained from the negative
SꢀR
SꢀR
slopes and positive y intercept of the plots, respectively.
Thus, differential activation entropy (DDS°SꢀR) contributes
to lowering the value of DDG°
(=DDH°SꢀRꢀTDDS°SꢀR),
SꢀR
with an unfavorable enthalpic contribution (DDH°SꢀR). No-
tably, when 2b and 2c were used as catalysts, the major
enantiomer produced switched from (R)- to (S)-5aa at the
equipodal temperature (T0), and thereafter the S selectivity
continued to increase as the temperature further in-
creased.[40] Enantioswitching in the FC reaction when using
1,3-diamine-tethered guanidine/bisthiourea is a consequence
of the occurrence of the equipodal temperature (T0) in the
temperature range with negative slopes in the Eyring
plots.[41] It is also important to note that stereo-discrimina-
tion catalyzed by 2a (maximum enantiomeric excess (ee) of
(S)-5aa: 91% ee)[14j] and 2g (Figure 2 f, maximum ee of (S)-
Entry
T [8C]
Yield [%][a]
ee [%][b]
1
2
3
4
ꢀ30
ꢀ10
0
30
43
51
69
36
35
31
27
20
[a] Yield of isolated product. [b] Determined by HPLC on a chiral sta-
tionary phase.
ent catalytic activity from 2a. 1,2-Diamine-tethered 1a pro-
duced (R)-5aa as a major product, whereas 1,3-diamine-
tethered catalyst 2a predominantly gave (S)-5aa. Further-
more, the reactivity and enantioselectivity of 1a are both
drastically reduced in comparison with 2a. These observa-
tions indicate that the selection of a suitable length of chiral
spacer is critical to synergize the guanidine and thiourea
functionalities in the catalyst and achieve drastic rate accel-
eration and effective stereocontrol. It is also important to
note that the temperature-dependency profiles are different
for the FC reactions catalyzed by 1a and 2a. In the case of
1a, the enantioselectivity increased as the reaction tempera-
ture decreased, indicating that stereo-discrimination cata-
lyzed by 1a is controlled by differential enthalpy (DDH°)
with an unfavorable entropic contribution (DDS°). Thus, we
concluded that the 1,3-diamine spacer played a principal
role in attaining entropy-controlled stereo-discrimination in
the FC reaction catalyzed by 2a.
5aa: 91% ee) is governed by only DDS°
at 0.025m sub-
SꢀR
strate concentration. In the case of catalysts 2e (Figure 2d,
maximum ee of (S)-5aa: 80% ee) and 2 f (Figure 2e, maxi-
mum ee of (S)-5aa: 80% ee), a decrease in the substrate
concentration to 0.01m is effective to increase the magni-
tude of DDS°
for stereo-discrimination and DDH°
ap-
SꢀR
SꢀR
proaches zero. Although further studies to probe the rela-
tionship between kinetics and molecular mechanism are re-
quired, these results suggest that both the six-membered
ring containing the guanidine moiety and the a-branched
substituent on the chiral spacer in 2 are crucial for attaining
the maximum magnitude of differential activation entropy
(DDS°SꢀR) in the stereo-determining processes in the FC re-
action of 3a with 4a.
Chem. Asian J. 2011, 6, 2463 – 2470
ꢀ 2011 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
2465