Supramolecular containers featuring both high catalytic activity and high enantioselectivity represent a design challenge of practical importance. Herein, it is demonstrated that a chiral octahedral coordination cage can be constructed by using twelve enantiopure Mn(salen)-derived dicarboxylic acids as linear linkers and six Zn -p-tert-butylsulfonylcalix[4]arene clusters as tetravalent four-connected vertices. The porous cage features a large hydrophobic cavity (≈3944 Å ) decorated with catalytically active metallosalen species and is shown to be an efficient and recyclable asymmetric catalyst for the oxidative kinetic resolution of racemic secondary alcohols and the epoxidation of olefins with up to >99 % enantiomeric excess. The cage architecture not only prevents intermolecular deactivation and stabilizes the Mn(salen) catalysts but also encapsulates substrates and concentrates reactants in the cavity, resulting in enhanced reactivity and enantioselectivity relative to the free metallosalen catalyst.

Inspired by the high efficiency and specificity of enzymes in living systems, the development of artificial catalysts intrinsic to the key features of enzyme has emerged as an active field. Recent advances in supramolecular chemistry have shown that supramolecular coordination cages, built from non-covalent coordination bonds, offer a diverse platform for enzyme mimics. Their inherent confined cavity, analogous to the binding pocket of an enzyme, and the facile tunability of building blocks are essential for substrate recognition, transition-state stabilization, and product release. In particular, the combination of chirality with supramolecular coordination cages will undoubtedly create an asymmetric microenvironment for promoting enantioselective transformation, thus providing not only a way to make synthetically useful asymmetric catalysts, but also a model to gain a better understanding for the fundamental principles of enzymatic catalysis in a chiral environment. The focus here is on recent progress of supramolecular coordination cages for asymmetric catalysis, and based on how supramolecular coordination cages function as reaction vessels, three approaches have been demonstrated. The aim of this review is to offer researchers general guidance and insight into the rational design of sophisticated cage containers for asymmetric catalysis.

The number of biologically interesting natural products possessing peroxide structure motifs is substantial and still growing. 1 Many peroxy natural products display antitumor, anticancer and anti parasite activities, which are attributed to the propensity of the peroxide to initiate radical reactions in an ironrich environment. 2 Furthermore, peroxide natural products such as artemisinin are clinically important anti malaria drugs. Despite the potential of chiral peroxides as biologically interesting or even clinically important compounds, synthetic methods for the preparation of chiral peroxides are highly limited. 3,4,5,6 In particular efficient catalytic enantioselective peroxidations with simple achiral precursors are urgently needed, yet none are available. In fact only a single example of a chiral auxiliarydirected peroxidation in high diastereoselectivity could be found in the literature. 7 Herein, we wish to report the development of a highly enantioselective peroxidation of α,β-unsaturated ketones with an easily accessible chiral organic catalyst.The base-promoted reaction of α,β-unsaturated ketones 1 with hydroperoxides 2 represents a classic epoxidation reaction. Asymmetric variants of this epoxidation with both chiral metal and organic catalysts have also been reported. 8-13 It is well-established that the epoxide 3 is formed via a two-step mechanism (Scheme 1); nucleophilic addition of the hydroperoxide 2 to 1 followed by an intramolecular nucleophilic substitution of the resulting enolate (5) that breaks the weak peroxide bond. In principle this epoxidation pathway (1 to 3) could be converted into a peroxidation pathway (1 to 6) if 5 could be trapped by protonation, although the overwhelming preference of 5 for the intramolecular nucleophilic substitution is evident from the lack of reported peroxidation of α,β-unsatrated carbonyl compounds.Although chiral amine-catalyzed nucleophilic epoxidations of α,β-unsaturated carbonyl compounds have already been reported, 13 we suspected that a cinchona alkaloid derivative such as 8 14 could not only render the nucleophilic addition of the hydroperoxide 2 to the iminium intermediate 9 enantioselective, but also strongly influence the partitioning of the peroxyenamine intermediate 10 between the epoxidation (10 to 11) and the peroxidation (10 to 12) pathways (Scheme 2). Presumably, due to steric crash and multipoint binding interactions between the peroxyenamine intermediate and the covalently linked cinchona alkaloid, the bond-rotational freedom of the peroxyenamine should be hampered, compared to that of the enolate 5 in Scheme 1. We expected that this conformational rigidity imposed by 8 on the peroxyenamine would diminish its ability to adopt the active conformation by which the nucleophilic enamine moiety is optimally aligned relative to the O-O bond for the nucleophilic attack. This in turn would decelerate the epoxidation. In contrast, with the NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript protonated quinuclidine as a prot...

A series of tetrathiafulvalene acetylene derivatives, [TTF-Ctriple bondC-A] [A=C6H4N(CH3)2-4 (1), C6H4OCH3-4 (2), C6H5 (3), C6H4F-4 (4), C6H4NO2-4 (5), C5H4N-2 (6), C5H4N-3 (7), and C5H4N-4 (8)], have been designed and synthesized to provide insight into the nature of the donor-acceptor interaction via a pi-conjugated triple bond. The X-ray crystal structure of [TTF-(Ctriple bondC)-C6H4OCH3-4] (2) reveals that the phenyl ring linked by acetylene is almost coplanar to the plane of TTF with a dihedral angle of 3.6 degrees. The strong intermolecular C-H...O hydrogen bonding was found to direct the molecular helical assemblies with a screw pitch of 5.148 A when viewed along the a-axis. Spectroscopic and electrochemical behaviors of the tetrathiafulvalene acetylene derivatives demonstrate that the TTF unit interacts with the electron-accepting group through the triple bond, thus leading to the intramolecular charge transfer. The pyridine-substituted TTF compounds 6-8 show remarkable sensing and coordinating properties toward Pb2+. Comparison of the spectroscopic and electrochemical properties and the calculation at the B3LYP/6-31G* level available in Gaussian 03 reveals that varying the bridged unit of the TTF-pi-A system from a double bond to a triple bond leads to positive shifts for the first and second oxidation potentials of the TTF moieties, while the extent of intramolecular charge transfer interactions through the pi-conjugated triple bond is smaller than that through the double bond.