Asymmetric catalytic reduction is the use of various chiral catalysts to reduce a prochiral organic compound to obtain a chiral product. This is one of the several techniques used in chiral synthesis.
Typically, a transition metal is used with a bulky chiral ligand to such that the substrate molecule can only approach in a particular orientation. This causes an external reductant to reduce the substrate in a predictable fashion. Well-known examples include Knowles' ruthenium-based catalyst, similar to Wilkinson's catalyst, which reduces alkenes, and Noyori asymmetric hydrogenation catalysts using chiral BINAP ligands and dihydrogen to reduce ketones and alkenes.
Transition metal-free catalysts, i.e. organocatalysts such as the CBS catalyst based on proline used to ketones are known as well.
References
 |
This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2007) |
|
||||||||||||||
 |
This organic chemistry article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
