Development of efficient methods for the practical enantioselective synthesis of chiral compounds has been one of the most important subjects in synthetic organic chemistry.
1)Many kinds of enantioselective syntheses employing various catalysts such as metal complexes coordinated with chiral ligands have been reported for more than three decades, [1][2][3][4][5][6] and several optically pure compounds prepared by enantioselective synthesis with the chiral catalysts are now commercially available (e.g. optically pure a-amino acids or alcohols by using asymmetric hydrogenation with Rh-or Ru-chiral phosphine catalysts [3][4][5] ; L-menthol by using Rh-BINAP-catalyzed asymmetric isomerization of an allylamine 4) ) and are used as chiral pools or auxiliaries for enantioselective syntheses. For the development of efficient chiral metal complex catalysts, the most significant strategy is based on the preparation of new useful chiral ligands. Various types of di-or mono-functionalized chiral ligands have been developed; for example, di-and mono-phosphines (P,P-or P-type), aminophosphines (P,N-type), diamine and amine (N,N-or N-type), etc. On the other hand, tri-or multi-functionalized ligands are much rarer. We previously reported in a preliminary communication the preparation of chiral norbornane derivatives bearing both diphosphine moieties and another hetero functional group. 7) In this article we describe in detail the synthesis of enantiomerically pure norbornane derivatives by employing both highly diastereoselective Diels-Alder reaction and stereospecific frame rearrangement (Wagner-Meerwein type rearrangement) as the key steps, and an application to rhodium-catalyzed asymmetric hydrogenation.
Results and DiscussionThe synthetic route to several optically pure norbornane derivatives bearing (2S)-and (3S)-substituents and an oxygen functional group at the 7-syn position is described in Chart 1. Yamamoto and co-workers reported an efficient Diels-Alder reaction of cyclopentadiene with an optically pure dimenthyl fumarate for the preparation of optically active norbornene derivatives.8) According to Yamamoto's and Fleming's procedures, [8][9][10] the diastereoselective Diels-Alder reaction of 5-trimethylsilylcyclopentadiene 1 with di-(1R)-menthyl fumarate 2 was carried out in the presence of diethylaluminun chloride in toluene at Ϫ78°C to yield the corresponding (2S,3S)-norbornene-dicarboxylic acid di-(1R)-menthyl ester 3 bearing a trimethylsilyl group at the 7-exo position in a quantitative yield with a diastereomeric excess of 97%. A single recrystallization from ethanol gave optically pure di-(1R)-menthyl ester 3. Halolactonization of the norbornene diester 3 was carried out with bromine to give a bromolactone 4 (97%) with selective participation of the carbonyl group of the 2-endo ester. The bromolactone 4 was allowed to rearrange stereospecifically with silver nitrate in methanol according to Fleming's procedure.9,10) The corresponding (2S,3S)-norbornene dicarboxylate 5 having a 7-syn hydroxyl group was obtaine...