Enantioselective carbon–sulfur bond formation: γ additions of aryl thiols to allenoates catalyzed by a chiral phosphepine

An effective phosphine-catalyzed method has been developed for the enantioselective addition of aryl thiols to the γ position of allenoates, thereby furnishing ready access to aryl alkyl sulfides in very good ee. An array of mechanistic data are consistent with addition of the chiral phosphine to the allenoate being the turnover-limiting step of the catalytic cycle. The optimized reaction conditions, as well as the mechanistic observations, differ markedly from an earlier report on asymmetric additions of alkyl thiols to allenoates, which highlights the potential for divergent behavior between alkyl and aryl thiols when serving as nucleophiles.