A New Class of Modular Chiral Ligands with Fluxional Groups

In ligand design for asymmetric catalysis, the usual norm is to derive the face shielding elements from a chiral source. New ligands in which the face shielding is determined by fluxional groups are introduced. Their design, modular synthesis, and experiments to demonstrate the significance of the fluxional groups are discussed. The advantage is that the fluxional groups, introduced at a later stage, allow for simple tuning of the face shielding group.