David Glueck, Department of Chemistry, Dartmouth College, is supported by the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Chemistry Program to develop catalytic methods to prepare optically active phosphines. The formation of P-stereogenic chiral ligands will be an important addition to the repertoire of C-centered chiral ligands currently available for catalyst preparation. Catalytic formation of P-C bonds in phosphines and their borane adducts will be investigated. The hypothesis that enantioselection in Pd-catalyzed asymmetric phosphination is under Curtin-Hammett control will be tested.
Chiral ligands are essential to asymmetric catalysis. This project will generate mechanistic information that will guide the design of new routes to phosphorus ligands that are chiral at the phosphorus atom. The potential for developing more efficient and more selective asymmetric catalysts using chiral-at-phosphorus ligands will be explored.
