General Papers ARKIVOC 2011 (ix) 367-380 Novel bifunctional chiral squaramide-amine catalysts for highly enantioselective addition of mono- and diketones to nitroalkenes Ze Dong,a Xiaoqing Jin,a Pengcheng Wang,a Chang Min,a Jin Zhang,a Zhe Chen,a Hai-Bing Zhou,a,b and Chune Donga,b* aState Key Laboratory of Virology, College of Pharmacy, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430071, China bKey Laboratory of Organofluorine Chemistry, Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200032, China E-mail:
[email protected] DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/ark.5550190.0012.927 Abstract Novel bifunctional chiral squaramide–amine organocatalysts have been developed by rational combination of pyrrolidine and a cinchona alkaloid. The catalysts promoted the enantioselective Michael addition of both mono- and diketones to a broad range of nitroalkenes providing the corresponding products in moderate to high yields with excellent enantioselectivities and diastereoselectivities (up to 96% yield, 96% ee, 98:2 dr) under mild conditions. These results demonstrate that the assembly of two chiral privileged skeletons, pyrrolidine and cinchonine with a squaramide linker is a useful strategy to reach a wider substrate scope, high reaction efficiency and enantioselectivity. The match of the chiralities between two backbones embedded in the catalysts is also critical for improving enantioselectivity. Keywords: Chiral squaramide–amine, organocatalyst, asymmetric Michael addition, pyrrolidine, cinchonine Introduction In the past decade, the organocatalytic