Carbon Isotope Chirality Initiated Asymmetric Autocatalysis

Significance

Soai’s asymmetric autocatalysis ­reaction is extended to the use of carbon isotope (^¹³C/^¹²C) chirality for inducing a very small enan­tiomeric excess of zinc alkoxide product, which gets amplified through subsequent enhancement. Such carbon isotopic chirality would be very difficult to be recognizable by any other methods known to date.