Dynamic Kinetic Reductive Conjugate Addition for Construction of Axial Chirality Enabled by Synergistic Photoredox/Cobalt Catalysis

Conjugate addition is among the most important synthetic protocols for constructing carbon skeletons and is widely used to synthesize natural products and drugs. However, asymmetric catalysis studies have mainly focused on constructing stereogenic centers arising from conjugate alkenes. Here, we report the first photoinduced cobalt-catalyzed dynamic kinetic reductive conjugate addition reaction that enables the formation of heterobiaryls with axial chirality (45 examples, up to 91% yield and 97% ee). This method features mild reaction conditions, good functional-group tolerance, and excellent enantiomeric control. Significantly, large amounts of metal waste and precious metal catalysts can be avoided under these conditions. Migration of the chiral arylcobalt species into the alkene might be the rate-determining step based on kinetic studies.