Application of “In-situ Prepared” Phosphine-Phosphite Ligands in the Rhodium Catalyzed Hydrogenation of Olefins

Since the preparation of L-Dopa, a drug to treat Parkinson disease, by an enantioselective catalytic hydrogenation, the area of Asymmetric Catalysis has experienced an impressive development. Thus, asymmetric catalytic transformations now allow to prepare a wide variety of chiral compounds very efficiently, including a good number of industrial applications for the agrochemical, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries.

  The research developed at the IIQ group has devoted its research to the preparation and application of phosphine-phosphite chiral ligands (P-OP) in several catalytic asymmetric reactions.

The procedure to optimize a catalyst requires the examination of a family of catalysts differing in the nature of R¹ and R² substituents. As the synthesis of ligands is rather time-consuming, this costs a significant part of the study of each reaction. Our objective in the present project is to test a fast-screening approach based on in-situ preparation of P-OP ligands. More specifically, the in-situ method consists in a one-pot preparation and coordination of each P-OP based catalyst, instead of isolate each ligand and catalyst precursor. It is important to highlight that with the available parallel reactors, the catalyst optimization process could be dramatically fastened with the proposed approach. Finally, to test the validity of the in situ approach. the results obtained will be compared with available data from reactions performed with isolated ligands and precatalysts.