Chiral -Hydroxyalkyloxazolines as Ligands in the Enantioselective Addition of Diethylzinc to Aldehydes

The inherent nature of chirality results in extraordinary specificity of biological systems to recognize chiral molecules. Efforts to control the chirality of molecules resulted in major advances in the field of chemical catalysis. The development of various drugs as pure enantiomers, along with a variety of other biologically active compounds, would not have been possible without the advances of studies based on asymmetric catalysis in recent decades. Among the challenges found in the stereoselective synthesis of organic molecules, it is included the development of low cost ligands and catalysts. 1-4 Here we report our results involving the addition of diethylzinc to aryl aldehydes using βhydroxyalkyloxazolines 1, 2, 3 and 4 as chiral ligands (Figure 1).