Two chiral porous organic polymers (CPOPs) were synthesized by linking a TADDOL-embedded building block with arylethynylenes units. The CPOPs are highly stable to thermal treatment, moisture, acidity, and basicity. The dihydroxy groups of TADDOL inside the pores promise the CPOPs as good asymmetric catalysts after postsynthesis modification with a secondary metal center. After being treated with Ti(O i Pr) 4 , the CPOPs could be used as highly effective and reusable heterogeneous catalyst for asymmetric diethylzinc addition to aldehydes with up to 99% conversion and 95% ee. This work promises the potential of generating chiral solid catalysts with unique and practically useful enantioselective functions via a modular approach.As one of the most important porous materials, porous organic polymers (POPs) have attracted considerable attention during the past decades, owing to their wide range of potential applications in heterogeneous catalysis, 15 gas adsorption 610 and molecular separations. 1114 In comparison with metalorganic frameworks (MOFs) 1518 and crystalline covalent-organic frameworks (COFs), 1922 these amorphous porous materials show high stability to thermal treatment, moisture, and acidity/ basicity conditions, thus presenting an excellent platform for engineering recyclable and reusable heterogeneous catalysts. POPs can also be constructed from catalytic active molecular building blocks and then employed for chemical catalysis with high activity, whose catalytic performance can be rationally tuned by adjusting the monomeric units. 2325 While an appreciable amount of work has been carried out on the use of POPs in gas storage and separations, only a small number of reports have explored their use in catalysis, especially in asymmetric catalysis, 2630 mainly because of the difficulty in their controllable synthesis and intricate behaviors in catalysis progress.TADDOL (α,α,α¤,α¤-tetraaryl-1,3-dioxolane-4,5-dimethanol) derivatives with intrinsic C 2 symmetry have been established as one of the best known privileged ligands in the field of asymmetric synthesis.3135 Heterogeneous TADDOL catalysts can be prepared by immobilizing TADDOL to resins, 33 highly porous silica gel, 34 or by copolymerizing TADDOL derivatives with styrene, 35 but only a few of them exhibit satisfactory enantioselectivity. Asymmetric diethylzinc addition to aldehydes is important for preparing chiral alcohols. 3638 In this work, we describe the synthesis of two chiral porous organic polymers (CPOPs) from a TADDOL based building unit and demonstrate their heterogeneous catalytic activities in asymmetric diethylzinc addition to aldehydes after post-modified with Ti(O i Pr) 4 , with up to 95% ee.
Results and DiscussionTADDOL tetrabromo starting material A (4R,5R)-2,2-dimethyl-α,α,α¤,α¤-tetra-P-bromophenyl-1,3-dioxolane-4,5-dimethanol was prepared in two steps from readily available L-tartaric acid in moderate overall yield (39%). As shown in Scheme 1, chiral porous organic polymers (CPOPs 1 and 2) were synthesized in good yields (9...