Enantioselective Addition of Grignard Reagents to Aldehydes

The addition of Grignard reagents to aldehydes in the presence of chiral aminoalcohols shows a moderate enantioselectivity. The study carried out with a series of ligands allows the correlation between the structural characteristics and their reactivity. Introduction The use of chiral aminoalcohol to lead asymmetrically nucleophilic additions of organometallics to carbonyl compounds is a field of great potentiality in synthesis [1]. It is based on the coordination of amines and ethers to organolithium and Grignard reagents; the efficiency of the asymmetric induction depends, among other factors, on the characteristics of the metal [2], its aggregation state [3] and on the chiral ligand structure [4].