DOI: 10.1002/chem.201302975
Enantioselective Protonation of Alkenyl Trifluoroacetates Catalyzed by
Chiral Tin Methoxide
Akira Yanagisawa,* Takuya Sugita, and Kazuhiro Yoshida[a]
Carbonyl compounds possessing a tertiary carbon atom at
their a-position are often encountered in natural products
or biologically active molecules. One of the promising ways
to acquire such compounds in an enantioselective fashion is
the asymmetric protonation of enolates, enols, enol ethers,
or enol esters.[1–4] For the transformation, various chiral cata-
lysts, including chiral Brønsted acid catalysts and chiral
Lewis acid catalysts, are available. In contrast, examples of
transformations employing chiral base catalysts are few. We
have previously reported a method for preparing chiral tin
methoxide catalysts, which uses sodium methoxide and the
corresponding chiral tin dibromides bearing a 3,3’-substitut-
ed binaphthyl moiety.[5a] The in situ generated chiral tin
methoxides are efficiently transformed into chiral tin eno-
lates in the reaction with alkenyl trichloroacetates. The thus-
obtained chiral tin enolates show adequate nucleophilicity
toward various electrophiles and undergo asymmetric trans-
formations, including the aldol reaction,[5] the Mannich-type
reaction,[6] 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition,[7] g-lactone synthesis,[8]
and the N-nitroso aldol reaction.[9] We envisioned that if
a prochiral alkenyl ester derived from a ketone containing
a tertiary carbon atom at the a-position were used as the
substrate for the chiral tin catalysis in the presence of an al-
cohol, the asymmetric protonation of an in situ generated
chiral tin enolate would be possible. We report herein, the
enantioselective protonation of cyclic alkenyl trifluoroace-
tates with methanol by using chiral tin dibromide and
sodium methoxide as precatalysts (Scheme 1).
We initially adopted a 2-methyl-1-tetralone-derived alken-
yl trichloroacetate as the substrate for the protonation and
optimized the reaction conditions. As a result, when the al-
kenyl trichloroacetate was treated with chiral tin dibromide
1a (10 mol%) and NaOMe (10 mol%) in the presence of
MeOH (40 equiv) in hexane at room temperature for 46 h,
(S)-enriched 2-methyl-1-tetralone with 87% enantiomeric
excess (ee) was obtained in 42% yield (Scheme 2). We then
Scheme 2. Optimization of alkenyl esters.
examined the ability of alkenyl trifluoroacetates to generate
chiral tin enolates. Alkenyl esters have been shown to be su-
perior substrates for the enantioselective protonation em-
ploying a cinchona alkaloid as the chiral catalyst.[3r,10] We at-
tempted the asymmetric protonation of a 2-methyl-1-tetra-
lone-derived alkenyl trifluoroacetate and, as a consequence,
obtained the targeted ketone in a satisfactory yield with im-
proved enantiomeric excess in the reaction for 1 h
(Scheme 2).
Accordingly, we optimized the reaction conditions by
using the alkenyl trifluoroacetate. The results are summar-
ized in Table 1. Reducing the amounts of the pre-catalysts
to 2 mol% did not cause a significant deceleration of the re-
action (compare entries 2 and 1, Table 1). To obtain a prod-
uct with a higher enantiomeric ratio, we elevated the reac-
tion temperature. The reaction at 508C increased the enan-
tioselectivity to 93% ee (entry 5).
Scheme 1. Enantioselective protonation of cyclic alkenyl trifluoroacetates
catalyzed by in situ generated chiral tin methoxide.
We further examined the effects of substituents at 3,3’-po-
sitions of chiral tin precatalyst 1. When Ph-substituted chiral
tin dibromide 1c was used, the protonation proceeded and
both yield and enantiomeric excess were higher than those
obtained by using chiral tin dibromide 1a, which has 4-
F3CC6H4 groups at its 3,3’-positions (Table 2, compare en-
tries 3 and 1). Because the employment of 3,3’-unsubstituted
chiral tin precatalyst 1e (Ar=H) resulted in a low enantio-
meric excess (entry 4), bulky substituents at the 3,3’-posi-
[a] Prof. Dr. A. Yanagisawa, T. Sugita, Prof.Dr. K. Yoshida
Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science
Chiba University, Inage, Chiba 263-8522 (Japan)
Fax : (+81)43-290-2789
Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW
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Chem. Eur. J. 2013, 19, 16200 – 16203