A Supplement For That Anemic Asymmetric Synthesis

Developing the Process

Hi everyone, I hope everyone is doing fine.   How many of you can think of reactions that include iron ?  It is the one of the most abundant elements on earth and yet I scratch my head and can only think of two times when I have used iron in an organic synthesis.  I bet one of the reactions that you have used iron is the reduction of a nitro compound to an amine.  Another reaction that was central to my undergraduate project where I had used iron is a Friedels-Craft reaction with ferrocene to replace the cyclopentadiene with an aromatic ring.  I thought it was a pretty cool reaction back then.  I don’t think I have covered asymmetric reactions in a long time.  What better opportunity to introduce a series of catalysts that no one would have thought could used asymmetrically, right now.  I found it particularly surprising to realize that iron…

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