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Organocatalytic Asymmetric Hydrolysis of Epoxides
Author(s) -
Monaco Mattia Riccardo,
Prévost Sébastien,
List Benjamin
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
angewandte chemie international edition
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.831
H-Index - 550
eISSN - 1521-3773
pISSN - 1433-7851
DOI - 10.1002/anie.201400170
Subject(s) - desymmetrization , chemistry , dihydroxylation , nucleophile , enantioselective synthesis , phosphoric acid , hydrolysis , organocatalysis , organic chemistry , combinatorial chemistry , catalysis
The hydrolytic ring opening of epoxides is an important biosynthetic transformation and is also applied industrially. We report the first organocatalytic variant of this reaction, exploiting our recently discovered activation of carboxylic acids with chiral phosphoric acids via heterodimerization. The methodology mimics the enzymatic mechanism, which involves an enzyme‐bound carboxylate nucleophile. A newly designed phosphoric acid catalyst displays high stereocontrol in the desymmetrization of meso ‐epoxides. The methodology shows wide generality with cyclic, acylic, aromatic, and aliphatic substrates. We also apply our method in the first highly enantioselective anti‐dihydroxylation of simple olefins.