“…Axially chiral ligands were first reported in a hydrogenation reaction in 1977 and have gained ground ever since (Grubbs et al, 1977).In addition to the biaryl backbone bisphosphanes (2,2′-bis (diphenylphosphino)-1,1′-binaphthyl) (Miyashita et al, 1980), derivatives of the corresponding diamines (biphenyldiamine and binaphthyldiamine) have performed successfully in many asymmetric catalytic reactions (Rosini et al, 1992). These include stereoselective polymerizations of methacrylate (Suda et al, 1983) and lactate (Spassky et al, 1996) and numerous enantioselective modifications of olefins such as epoxidation (Nishinaga et al, 1988), aziridination (Suga et al, 2003), cyclopropanation (Chen et al, 1995) and hydrogenation (Pertici et al, 1996). With a structurally rigid binaphthyl ligand backbone, the configuration of the ligand is fixed and its axial chirality can efficiently be transmitted to the active site catalyst.…”