Density functional study on enantioselective reduction of keto oxime ether with borane catalyzed by oxazaborolidine

Chiral amino alcohols have interesting biological activities and are used widely as chiral ligands in metal-mediated organic reactions[1―3]. Although many amino alcohols can be derived from the available amino acids, the asymmetric synthesis is an important method to get novel amino alcohols. Tillyer et al.[4] reported a new, highly stereoselective synthesis of cyclic (1S,2R)-cis amino alcohols A from keto oxime ethers B, via the enantioselective reduction catalyzed by oxazaborolidine C in …

Density functional study on enantioselective reduction of keto oxime ether with borane catalyzed by oxazaborolidine

The enantioselective reduction of keto oxime ether with borane catalyzed by oxazaborolidine is discussed by the density functional theory (DFT) method. The main intermediates and transition states for this reaction are optimized completely at the B3LYP/6-31g(d) level, and the transition states are verified by vibrational modes. As shown, the chirality-controlled steps for this re- action are the hydride transfer from borane to carbonyl carbon and oxime carbon of keto oxime ether, and the chirality for the reduced products is determined in these two reaction steps. In all examined reaction paths, the first hydride is transferred via a six-membered ring and the second hydride via a five-membered ring or a four-membered ring.