New opportunities in enantioselective borrowing hydrogen – Chiron

Hydrogenation and the related borrowing hydrogen are arguably among the most useful routes for the eco-compatible creation of chiral molecules. While molecular hydrogen can be transferred to preformed unsaturated species through classical hydrogenation and Transfer Hydrogenation (TH), Borrowing Hydrogen (BH) enables to condense various nucleophiles with abundant alcohols while directly generating saturated final products. Enantioselective BH have for now relied almost exclusively on the enantioselective hydrogenation of the transient unsaturated species requiring the use of expensive chiral ruthenium or iridium complexes. On the other side, iron cyclopentadienone complexes have found numerous applications in the last years notably for TH and BH, providing unique reactivities. However, the chiral variants developed have for now met with limited success (max 77% ee).
In order to bring TH and BH in a new dimension and find solutions to the above mentioned challenges, through the Chiron project, we propose to develop innovative enantioselective BH based on alternative enantiodetermining events and to design new chiral iron catalysts for enantioselective TH and BH.