Palladium-Catalyzed Asymmetric Allyic Alkylation of Unstabilized Nucleophiles

Significance

This paper describes the first highly enantioselective palladium-catalyzed asymmetric allylic alkylation (AAA) with unstabilized ”hard" ­nucleophiles. The complexation of the ”hard" ­nucleophile with BF₃ makes the nucleophile soft, which allowed the authors to use this ”hard" nucleophile in AAA reactions. Furthermore, the resulting product could be applied to diastereoselective dihydroxylation as well as epoxidation.