Asymmetric Conjugate Addition of 1-Fluoro-1-nitro(phenylsulfonyl)methane to

Chiral organofluorine compounds is a rapidly developing area of research because of their importance in biochemical and medicinal applications and material science.1 Among various strategies, electrophilic fluorination2 of active methines and C-C bond formation3 of fluorocarbon nucleophiles are two typical approaches for the synthesis of fluorine-con-taining molecules. Particularly, asymmetric catalytic synthesis of chiral fluorinated compounds has received a great deal of attention in recent years. The use of fluorinated active methine nucleophiles such as fluoromalonate,4 α-fluoro-β-ketoesters,5 fluorobis(phenylsulfonyl)methane,6 and 1-fluoro-1-nitro(phenylsulfonyl)methane (FNSM)7 for a catalytic asymmetric reaction has become increasingly popular. Re-cently, several groups have developed elegant catalytic conju-gate addition to α,β-unsaturated carbonyl compounds7a-b an