Readily Accessible Diene Ligands for Enantioselective Conjugate Additions

Significance

Chiral dienes as ligands in transition-metal catalysis received quite a bit of attention in recent years; however, ligand availability often limits the potential of the developed methods. This paper reports a convenient synthetic approach towards 2 and a library of related ligands via palladium-catalyzed asymmetric allylic alkylation (Pd-AAA). A palladium complex of 2 was successfully used in the conjugate addition of boronic acids to α,β-unsaturated ketones; the corresponding products were obtained with 73-99% yields and 54-92% ee.