Chiral Ligands for Rhodium‐Catalyzed Asymmetric Hydroformylation: A Personal Account

Asymmetric hydroformylation represents one of the most efficient routes for the preparation of chiral aldehydes from alkenes in the presence of syngas in a perfect atom‐economic way. During the past few decades, a variety of chiral ligands have been developed for the asymmetric hydroformylation. However, only a few ligands exhibit good performance in terms of the regio‐ and enantioselectivities. Additionally, for the chiral ligands developed up to now, only limited substrates were tolerated and no examples have led to the application of the asymmetric hydroformylation reaction on a commercial scale due to several technical challenges. This account provides a brief introduction of the current efficient chiral ligands for asymmetric hydroformylation and the ongoing efforts we have made in this field.