Coordination of a photoswitchable chiral phosphate ligand to an achiral manganese(iii)-salen complex yields a catalyst that can produce either enantiomer of an epoxide from a single alkene substrate. This enantiodivergent catalysis is governed by the transfer of the chirality of the phosphate ligand to the manganese(iii)-salen complex.
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References
Dorel, R. & Feringa, B. L. Photoswitchable catalysis based on the isomerisation of double bonds. Chem. Commun. 55, 6477–6486 (2019). A review article that presents various kinds of photoswitchable catalysts and also highlights photoswitchable enantiodivergent catalysts.
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Pizzolato, S. F. et al. Central-to-helical-to-axial-to-central transfer of chirality with a photoresponsive catalyst. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 140, 17278–17289 (2018). This paper reports a photoresponsive catalyst that is based on the second-generation light-driven molecular motor core, and its structure resembles that of our phosphate ligand.
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This is a summary of: Chen, X. et al. Enantiodivergent epoxidation of alkenes with a photoswitchable phosphate manganese-salen complex. Nat. Synth. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44160-022-00157-7 (2022).
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A photoswitchable catalyst for the enantiodivergent epoxidation of alkenes. Nat. Synth 1, 837–838 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44160-022-00160-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44160-022-00160-y
