Readily Accessible and Highly Efficient Ferrocene‐Based Amino‐Phosphine‐Alcohol (f‐Amphol) Ligands for Iridium‐Catalyzed Asymmetric Hydrogenation of Simple Ketones

Abstract

We have successfully developed a series of novel and modular ferrorence-based amino-phosphine-alcohol (f-Amphol) ligands, and applied them to iridium-catalyzed asymmetric hydrogenation of various simple ketones to afford the corresponding chiral alcohols with excellent enantioselectivities and conversions (98-99.9 % ee, >99 % conversion, turnover number up to 200 000). Control experiments and density functional theory (DFT) calculations have shown that the hydroxyl group of our f-Amphol ligands played a key role in this asymmetric hydrogenation.