A Homogeneous Chiral Manganese(III)–Salphe Catalyst for Enantioselective Epoxidation of Olefins

Abstract

A new chiral Mn(III)–Salphe catalyst was synthesized from natural amino acid (R)-phenylalanine and 3,5-di-tert-butyl-hydroxybenzaldehyde and applied to the asymmetric epoxidations of unfunctionalized olefins in ionic liquids. Satisfactory enantioselectivities (79% < ee < 93%) and good yields were achieved when NaClO was used as oxidant. We found that both the pH value (11.3) and reaction temperature (15 °C) were crucial for the epoxidation reactions. In our reaction system, NH4OAc was unnecessary. We proposed that alcoholic hydroxyls in the Mn(III)–Salphe compound played the role of axial ligand. However, the reaction time was longer than when using Jacobsen's catalyst because of the structure of the Mn(III)–Salphe compound, in which coordination geometries by the two alcoholic hydroxyls with certain angles affected the substrate approaching the Mn(V) = 0 center. The chiral ligand was characterized by the combination of infrared, ultraviolet, and visible spectra and 1H NMR. Supplemental materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Synthetic Communications® to view the free supplemental file.