A paper published by Prof. Vidal’s group in Chem. Eur. J. has been highlighted in Synfacts, 12(10), 1068. Synfacts selects the most significant results on synthetic organic chemistry that appear in the literature considered as the future trends in synthetic chemistry.

The authors show that Iridium(I) complexes with phosphine–phosphite ligands efficiently catalyze the enantioselective hydrogenation of diverse seven-membered C=N-containing heterocyclic compounds (eleven examples; up to 97 % ee). The P-OP ligand L3, which incorporates an ortho-diphenyl substituted octahydrobinol phosphite fragment, provided the highest enantioselectivities in the hydrogenation of most of the heterocyclic compounds studied. The observed stereoselection was rationalized by means of DFT calculations.

Asymmetric hydrogenation of seven-membered C=N-containing heterocycles and rationalization of the enantioselectivity B. Balakrishna, A. Bauzá, A. Frontera, A. Vidal-Ferran
Chem. Eur. J. 2016, 22, 10607-10613