Iridium-Catalyzed Allylic Hydroxylation

Significance

Chiral phosphoramidite ligands have been successfully employed in asymmetric allylic alkylation and amination reactions; however, the allylic substitution reaction with O-nucleophiles is less developed. In this paper, the authors developed a novel, air- and moisture-stable iridium/chiral phosphoramidite complex, which nicely catalyzes the direct enantioselective allylic hydro­xylation to prepare highly enantioenriched branched allylic alcohol products directly. This work is an important addition to previously reported enantioselective allylic hydroxylation (I. Lyothier, C. Defieber, E. M. Carreira Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2006, 45, 6204).