Angewandte
Chemie
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201307036
Asymmetric Synthesis
Palladium-Catalyzed Asymmetric Hydrogenolysis of N-Sulfonyl
Aminoalcohols via Achiral Enesulfonamide Intermediates**
Chang-Bin Yu and Yong-Gui Zhou*
Hydrogenolysis is an important synthetic method in organic
chemistry,[1] and has been widely applied in industrial
processes,[2] natural product synthesis,[3] and the removal of
waste materials.[4] In practice, most hydrogenolysis reactions
have been used for the synthesis of racemic or achiral
compounds. Very few studies on asymmetric homogeneous
Scheme 1. Stereoconvergent palladium-catalyzed formal asymmetric
hydrogenolysis of N-sulfonyl aminoalcohols.
hydrogenolysis have been reported. The first example,
reported by Chan and Coleman, was a homogeneous asym-
metric hydrogenolysis of sodium epoxysuccinate through
desymmetrization with chiral rhodium catalysts with moder-
ate enantioselectivity.[5] Subsequently, a water-soluble sulfo-
nated-phosphine–rhodium catalyst system for the asymmetric
hydrogenolysis of epoxides was described by Bakos et al., but
the products were obtained with only 39% ee.[6] Kꢀndig and
co-workers documented a desymmetrization of meso dihalide
complexes by asymmetric hydrogenolysis, which led to planar
chiral organometallic complexes.[7] Very recently, asymmetric
hydrogenolysis of racemic tertiary alcohols was also success-
fully developed.[8] Despite considerable efforts, these reac-
tions are far from ideal because of low optical enrichment of
the hydrogenolysis product and a relatively limited range of
substrates. Therefore, the search for an efficient strategy for
homogeneous asymmetric hydrogenolysis and extension of
the scope of such processes to a wider range of substrates is
still of great significance.
Palladium has been extensively investigated as a hetero-
geneous hydrogenolysis catalyst.[9] In contrast, palladium-
catalyzed homogeneous asymmetric hydrogenolysis is still
rare.[7] Recently, homogeneous palladium catalysts were
successfully utilized for the asymmetric hydrogenation of
ketones,[10] imines,[11] heteroaromatic compounds,[12] and ene-
sulfonamides[13] by us and other research groups. Considering
the straightforward synthesis of N-sulfonyl aminoalcohols
from commercially available starting materials and the
usefulness of the hydrogenolysis products, chiral amines
with two contiguous stereogenic centers,[14] we speculated
that a chiral palladium catalyst system could be applied for
the homogeneous asymmetric hydrogenolysis of N-sulfonyl
aminoalcohols (Scheme 1). Herein, we report the palladium-
catalyzed formal asymmetric hydrogenolysis of N-sulfonyl
aminoalcohols to give chiral amines with two contiguous
stereocenters with up to 94% ee. Furthermore, both
“dynamic kinetic asymmetric transformation” and “dynamic
kinetic resolution” phenomena were observed.
Prior to our study, we wanted to synthesize the chiral N-
((1R,2S)-1-butyl-2,3-dihydro-1H-inden-2-yl)-4-methylbenze-
nesulfonamide 2a by hydrogenolysis of the benzylic hydroxy
group of the N-sulfonyl aminoalcohol (1S,2S)-1a[15] with Pd/C
as the catalyst in the presence of trifluoroacetic acid (TFA).
Surprisingly, although the reaction proceeded smoothly
À
[Eq. (1)], the stereogenic center of the C N bond was also
racemized: only racemic cis-2a was obtained in 76% yield.
This observation suggested that an achiral intermediate might
be involved in this process, and that the asymmetric hydro-
genolysis of racemic N-sulfonyl aminoalcohols might be
possible. In this context, we began to study the homogeneous
palladium-catalyzed asymmetric hydrogenolysis of racemic
N-sulfonyl aminoalcohols.
First, racemic 1a was chosen as a model substrate.
Asymmetric hydrogenolysis proceeded in the presence of
trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) in trifluoroethanol (TFE) with
chiral Pd(OCOCF3)2/(R)-synphos (L1) as the catalyst to
afford the desired product in 84% yield with 69% ee and
higher than 20:1 diastereoselectivity (Table 1, entry 1). As
expected, use of the antipode of the (R)-synphos ligand
resulted in the opposite configuration (Table 1, entry 2), thus
suggesting that the stereoselectivity is completely controlled
by the chiral catalyst. These observations excited our interest
and encouraged us to further explore this formal hydro-
genolysis reaction. Subsequently, the effect of the Brønsted
acid on the enantioselectivity and reactivity was investigated.
[*] Dr. C.-B. Yu, Prof. Y.-G. Zhou
State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Dalian Institute of Chemical
Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Dalian 116023 (China)
E-mail: ygzhou@dicp.ac.cn
[**] Financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (21125208 & 21032003) and the National Basic Research
Program of China (2010CB833300) is acknowledged.
Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 13365 –13368
ꢀ 2013 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
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