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Abstract A new chiral manganese PNP pincer complex is described. The asymmetric hydrogenation of several prochiral ketones with molecular hydrogen in the presence of this complex proceeds under mild conditions (30–40 °C, 4 h, 30 bar H 2 ). Besides high catalytic activity for aromatic substrates, aliphatic ketones are hydrogenated with remarkable selectivity (e.r. up to 92:8). DFT calculations support an outer sphere hydrogenation mechanism as well as the experimentally determined stereochemistry.
Garbe et al. (Fri,) studied this question.