compounds, have been widely used in the formation and rearrangements of stereocontrolled C–C bond, which results in a variety of
chiral organic compounds [3]. Thus, development of practical and efficient methods for catalytic enantioselective preparation of chiral
α-hydroxysilanes is an important and challenging goal of research in chemical synthesis. As we all know, the asymmetric reduction of
acylsilanes [4] and the hydrogenation of enolsilanes [5] are the majority of methods for the preparation of chiral α-hydroxysilanes,
which suffers from the requirement of multistep reactions [6] and a lack of functionality tolerance owing to using strong bases. In their
pioneering work, Kleeberg and Oestreich reported the racemic 1,2-addition of a silicon nucleophile to aldehydes catalyzed by a
carbene–Cu complex and proposed a reasonable catalytic cycle [7]. The first example of Cu-catalyzed enantioselective 1,2-addition of
a silicon nucleophile to aldehydes was reported by Riant et al. in 2013 [8]. Then our group reported a transition metal-free method for
enantioselective silyl addition to aromatic aldehydes in a mixture of tetrahydrofuran and methanol [9]. Despite their potential utility,
existing methods are not environmentally friendly and suffer from one or more disadvantages, for example, hazardous organic solvents,
complex workup and purification, use of toxic metal catalysts, poor yields, and long reaction time. Therefore, the development of
simple, safe, economical and environmentally friendly methods for the preparation of chiral α-hydroxysilanes is still a challenge.
Exploring organic reactions in water is very important in modern organic chemistry because water is non-flammable, non-toxic and
non-carcinogenic, and in addition, water is probably the least expensive and most easily accessible solvents. Moreover, running a
reaction in water instead of an organic solvent leads to novel modes of transformations and produces unique reactivity and selectivity
[
10]. Indeed, the catalytic reactions sometimes exhibit better performance in water over analogous homogeneous systems [11].
The coenzyme thiamine (vitamin B1, a natural thiazolium salt) is involved in many enzymatic processes, in which the catalytically
active species has been proposed to be a carbene. Great efforts have been made to perform enzyme mimetic asymmetric carbene
catalysis [12]. Among the N-heterocyclic carbenes, [2.2]paracyclophane backbone is one of the most important scaffolds due to its
utility as a planar chiral source in asymmetric catalysis [13]. Herein, we disclose our findings that N-heterocyclic carbenes derived
from [2.2]paracyclophane are effective catalysts for the enantioselective 1,2-silylation of aromatic aldehydes in water without the use
of any harmful organic solvents and transition-metal salts.
It is well known that solvents play a key role in many organic reactions as they modify both reaction equilibrium and kinetics. To
our surprise, in carbene-catalyzed silyation reaction [9, 14, 16], it has been shown that water or methanol can bear other functions such
as acting as promoter and even co-catalyst beyond their role as reaction media. These results indicate that the proton sources (water or
methanol) are required for efficient and enantioselective silyl addition reaction. Therefore, we designed two new hydroxyl-
functionalized N-heterocyclic carbene precursors derived from [2.2]paracyclophane (Scheme 1). We anticipated that a hydroxyl group
would be introduced into the [2.2]paracyclophane skeleton using a Suzuki-Miyaura cross coupling approach. As expected, 2a and 2b
were obtained in high yields by Pd-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction of enantiomerically pure 1 [14] with aromatic boronic acids. On
the basis of the previous reports [15], (S,S
p
)-4 and (S,S )-5 were easily prepared in two steps from 2a and 2b in 66 and 85% yields,
p
respectively (Scheme 1).
Scheme 1. Synthesis of N-heterocyclic carbene precursors.
According to the procedure of Hoveyda for the carbene-catalyzed asymmetric conjugate addition of a silyl group to α, β-unsaturated
ketones [16a], we first probed whether the new hydroxyl-functionalized carbene precursor (S,S
aromatic aldehydes efficiently and enantioselectively (Table 1). Fortunately, with 5.0 mol% (S,S
benzaldehyde, and 1.5 equiv. of Me PhSiBpin in a solution that largely consists of water (THF:H
p
)-4 could catalyze the silylation of
)-4, 30 mol% of DBU, 1.0 equiv. of
O = 1:3), the desired product 7a was
p
2
2
obtained in moderate yield and enantioselectivity without the formation of benzoin 7b (Table 1, entry 1). However, the silyl addition
did not take place to any appreciable extent in an equal mixture of THF and water (Table 1, entry 2). Moreover, the above reactions did
not proceed when performed in typical organic solvents (Table 1, entries 3-6). These results suggest that the amount of water has a
significant influence on the reaction rate, and the use of pure water as solvent might be a viable solvent so as to compensate for the lack
of reactivity. Just as expected, the silylation reaction proceeded more smoothly in pure water than in a mixture of THF and water, so
pure water was chosen as the optimal solvent (Table 1, entry 7). To improve the yield and enantioselectivity, we then explored the
reaction parameters with a particular emphasis on base effects. Unfortunately, the yield decreased dramatically by using N,N-
diisopropylethylamine instead of DBU (Table 1, entry 8). Next, some water-soluble bases were used for the reaction, such as NaOAC,
KF and NaOH. When NaOAc was subjected to the silyl transfer reaction, the reaction did not occur (Table 1, entry 9). It was observed
that KF or NaOH exhibited much higher reactivity but a slightly lower level of enantioselectivity was obtained (Table 1, entries 10-11).
Subsequently, the impact of the amount of base was also evaluated. Reduction of the amount of NaOH from 30 mol% to 5 mol%
caused a sharp decrease in the reactivity (Table 1, entry 12). In light of the negative effect of NaOH, we turned our attention back to
DBU. To our delight, the highest yield was achieved by increasing the amount of DBU from 30 mol% to 100 mol% without affecting
the enantioselectivity, indicating that 100 mol% DBU was the most suitable choice (Table 1, entry 13). Interestingly, as shown in Table
1
, changing the reaction conditions could not alter the enantioselectivity by an appreciable amount.