An Additional Coordination Group Leads to Extremely Efficient Chiral Iridium Catalysts for Asymmetric Hydrogenation of Ketones

Abstract

What a turnover! An efficient chiral iridium catalyst that bears a tridentate spiro aminophosphine ligand catalyzes the asymmetric hydrogenation of ketones with excellent enantioselectivities (up to 99.9 % ee) and extremely high turnover numbers (TONs; as high as 4 550 000).