Highly Effective Chiral Ortho-Substituted BINAPO Ligangs (o-BINAPO): Applications in Ru-Catalyzed Asy -mmetriC Hydrogenations of β-(Acylamino) acrylates and β-Keto Esters[J

During the last several decades, many effective chiral bisphos-phines have been developed. However, there is no solution in dealing with many transition metal-catalyzed asymmetric transfor-mations since enantioseletivities are often substrate-dependent. Subtle changes in conformational, steric, and electronic properties of chiral ligands can lead to dramatic variations of reactivities and enantioselectivities. Conformationally rigid and tunable chiral ligands offer a great advantage for optimizing the enantioselectivty of a reaction. Herein, we like to report ruthenium catalysts with a novel family of BINOL-derived phosphinite ligands for the first highly enantioselective hydrogenation of â-aryl-substituted â-(acyl-amino)acrylates. These catalysts are also effective for highly enantioselective hydrogenation of â-aryl-substituted â-keto esters. Noyori and co-workers have demonstrated that highly skewed BINAP was an effective ligand for many asymmetric catalyti