Building chiral molecules: asymmetric allylic alkylation

Abstract

One of most powerful approaches for the formation of complex chiral molecules is the palladium-catalyzed asymmetric allylic alkylation. This reaction has been broadly studied with a great variety of substrates and nucleophiles under different reaction conditions and it has promoted the synthesis of new chiral ligands to be evaluated as asymmetric inductors. Although the mechanisms as well as the active species equilibria are known, the performance of the catalytic system depends on the fine tuning of factors such as: substrate type, nucleophile nature, reaction medium, catalytic precursor and ligand type.