Enantioselective radical chemistry: a bright future ahead

• Anna C. Renner,
• Sagar S. Thorat,
• Hariharaputhiran Subramanian and
• Mukund P. Sibi

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2025, 21, 2283–2296, doi:10.3762/bjoc.21.174

• . The past three decades have seen enormous advances in the development of enantioselective radical reactions, particularly using organocatalysts. Some of the notable chiral organocatalysts imparting enantioselectivity include chiral secondary amines, chiral Brønsted acids, and chiral H-bonding

• catalysts. The drawbacks of chiral Lewis acids have been overcome to an extent using organocatalysis. The use of photochemistry to generate radicals by light-induced electron transfer has resulted in elegant enantioselective radical transformations. Several transition-metal photocatalysts [9] and organo

Organocatalytic asymmetric nitroso aldol reaction of α-substituted malonamates

• Ekta Gupta,
• Narendra Kumar Vaishanv,
• Sandeep Kumar,
• Raja Krishnan Purshottam,
• Ruchir Kant and
• Kishor Mohanan

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2022, 18, 217–224, doi:10.3762/bjoc.18.25

• on the screening of various bifunctional H-bonding catalysts, and in this regard, the reaction catalyzed by quinine-derived thiourea catalyst 3b furnished the product 4a in 55% yield and 71% ee (Table 1, entry 5). The other enantiomer was obtained when the reaction was carried out using the

Why do thioureas and squaramides slow down the Ireland–Claisen rearrangement?

• Dominika Krištofíková,
• Juraj Filo,
• Mária Mečiarová and
• Radovan Šebesta

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2019, 15, 2948–2957, doi:10.3762/bjoc.15.290

• hydrogen-donating organocatalysts and kinetic experiments suggest that the catalysts bind stronger to the starting silyl ketene acetals than to transition structures thus leading to inefficient rearrangement reactions. Keywords: DFT calculations; green solvents; H-bonding catalysts; Ireland–Claisen

• . For this, we have compared the uncatalyzed Ireland–Claisen rearrangement with three hydrogen-bond-catalyzed reactions. As model H-bonding catalysts, we selected diphenylthiourea, Schreiner thiourea, and the corresponding squaramide with bis(trifluoromethyl)phenyl groups. We have evaluated both the (E

• , which agrees well with the DFT calculated values. These kinetic measurements support the notion that H-bonding catalysts bind stronger to starting silyl ketene acetals and thus prevent it from undergoing Ireland–Claisen rearrangement. For more details, see Supporting Information File 1. Conclusion