A family of new chiral b-diketiminato-type ligands containing oxazoline moiety has been synthesized in moderate to high yields (typically 30-95%) via a Pd-catalyzed amination reaction of chiral oxazolines with primary amines and amides. Notably, (S)-tert-butylsulfinamide was successfully incorporated into the ligand framework as a coupling partner in amination. Due to the readily available pool of chiral building blocks, this represents a facile and modular approach for synthesizing libraries of novel chiral bdiketiminato-type ligands, with potential applications in asymmetric catalysis.Because the reactivity and selectivity of metal catalysts are largely determined by the auxiliary ligands, ligand design has been a central theme in catalysis, particularly in asymmetric synthesis, which continues to be of great academic and industrial importance. 1 One of the challenges is to derive efficient chiral catalysts for asymmetric induction in different substrates with subtle variations. Since it is not expected that a single catalyst will work for a wide range of substrates, an efficient strategy towards new catalysts would be the design of a search pathway that provides access to a large number of structurally similar ligands with tunable yet diverse substituents. 2 Indeed, many researchers have sought to develop asymmetric catalysts by screening a large pool of chiral ligands. 3 To this end, a modular approach for the ligand library construction is highly desirable. 4 b-Diketiminato ligands ( Figure 1A) have received great attention in coordination chemistry due to the ease of fine tuning of the steric and electronic properties. 5 These ligands are monoanionic upon deprotonation and form strong bonds with metals, usually in a bidentate fashion. Various b-diketiminato metal complexes have been employed in a number of catalytic reactions. 6,7 In a broader sense, the monoanionic, anilinido-imino ligands ( Figure 1B) can be included as a variation of the regular b-diketiminato framework. 8 One example is the ortho-oxazoline-substituted anilines, in which aniline nitrogens are typically not further functionalized. 9 Due to the presence of an aromatic ring, the resonance in the backbone is attenuated in comparison with the regular ligands and this may offer opportunity for electronic differentiation and stereocontrol upon coordination. 10 Given their extensive applications, it is somewhat surprising that the chiral variants of b-diketiminato ligands are relatively less developed in the literature, 11,12 although these moieties are often incorporated as subcomponents of multidentate or macrocyclic ligands in chiral environments. 13 In principle, stereo-directing groups can be introduced into all the R 1 -R 5 substituents. Of particular interest are ligands with chiral substituents at the periphery (R 1 and R 5 ) that are in close proximity with the open coordination site where catalysis is taking place. Among these, monoanionic, chiral semicorrin 14 and bisoxazoline ligands 15 are some of the successful examples, where chir...