SPHENOL, A New Chiral Framework for Asymmetric Synthesis

Privileged chiral catalysts have found tremendous applications and thus immensely advanced asymmetric synthesis in the past few decades. However, truly privileged chiral frameworks are still extremely limited. Thus, the search for and development of new versatile members remain in high demand but challenging. Herein we report the design, synthesis, and application of a new chiral framework, SPHENOL, which features combined advantages of BINOL and SPINOL. This unique feature enables SPHENOL to serve as a new platform for the development of chiral ligands and catalysts. Its superior performance has been demonstrated in mechanistically unrelated reactions, including asymmetric hydrogenation, hydroacylation, and spirocyclization for the practical asymmetric synthesis of SPHENOL itself. These results indicated the great potential of SPHENOL as a useful chiral framework.