Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol.142, No.8, 3724-3728, 2020
Development of Chiral Ureates as Chiral Strong Bronsted Base Catalysts
Recently, chiral Bronsted bases having high basicity have emerged as a powerful tool in developing new catalytic enantioselective reactions. However, such chiral strong Bronsted base catalysts are still very scarce. Herein, we report the development of a chiral anionic Brensted base having a N,N'-dialkyl ureate moiety as a basic site. Its prominent catalytic activity was demonstrated in the enantioselective addition reactions of alpha-thioacetamides as less acidic pronucleophiles with various electrophiles. Thus, the newly developed chiral catalyst with high accessibility and structural tunability would expand the scope of viable enantioselective transformations under Bronsted base catalysis.