Self-supported chiral catalysts for heterogeneous enantioselective reactions

The development of a new strategy to immobilize the homogeneous chiral catalysts for enantioselective reactions is highly desirable in order to overcome some drawbacks of conventional approaches. In this lecture, a conceptually new strategy for heterogenization of homogeneous chiral catalysts (i.e., "self-supporting" approach) is presented. The concept focuses on the use of homochiral metal-organic coordination polymers generated by self-assembly of chiral multitopic ligands with metal ions as the heterogeneous catalysts, and thus obviating the need of any exogenous support. The application of this "self-supporting" strategy has been exemplified in heterogeneous catalysis of asymmetric carbonyl-ene, sulfoxidation, and epoxidation, as well as asymmetric hydrogenation reactions.