Chirally Modified Platinum Generated by Adsorption of Cinchonidine Ether Derivatives: Towards Uncovering the Chiral Sites

The adsorption behavior of O ‐methyl and O ‐trimethylsilyl derivatives of cinchonidine (CD), employed as chiral modifiers for heterogeneous enantioselective hydrogenations on supported Pt catalysts, has been investigated by using attenuated total reflection infrared spectroscopy (ATR‐IR) and density functional theory (DFT) electronic structure calculations. The ATR‐IR spectroscopic investigation provided detailed insight of the adsorbed modifiers under conditions close to those employed during catalytic processes, and electronic structure calculations were used as a complement to the experiments to uncover the implications of conformational changes in generating the topology of the surface chiral site. The structural investigation of the adsorbed modifiers revealed a relationship between the spatial positions of the ether substituents and the enantiodifferentiation induced by the modified catalyst observed in the hydrogenation of α‐activated ketones. Experiments and calculations corroborate a model, according to which the addition of a bulky ether group to CD reshapes the chiral sites, thus generating catalytic chiral surfaces with different and, in some cases (e.g. hydrogenation of ketopantolactone), even opposite enantioselective properties to those obtained with CD without altering the absolute configuration of the modifier. The study also confirms that active surface conformations of cinchona modifiers are markedly different from those existing in vacuum and in solution, thus underlying the necessity of investigating the surface‐modifier interaction in order to understand enantioselectivity.