Chiral Catalysts

Abstract

The application of optically active compounds is steadily increasing due to their biological importance. The most efficient way for their synthesis is catalysis, i.e., a reaction where a small amount of chiral material (catalyst) can transmit chirality to a large amount of substrate. Of the various types of chiral catalysts, the present article is dealing exclusively with those containing transition metals in liquid phase. In the first part of the article the chiral ligands are arranged according to their donor atoms, and classified as phosphanes (mono‐ and bidentate phosphanes possessing various elements of chirality), nitrogen, and oxygen ligands, etc. This section is followed by chiral catalysts grouped systematically according to their central metal. (The discussion is restricted to those homogeneous chiral catalysts, where the chemical transformation of an achiral substrate possessing enantiotopic groups, atoms, faces, or centers into one enantiomer takes place.) While in the “ligand section,” the seminal works on the synthesis of the most widely used basic ligands and their first applications are demonstrated, in the “metal section,” the most recent applications (over the past 5 years) are discussed.