Research Projects

The present proposal involves the design and synthesis of novel biaryl based chiral phosphoric acids and evaluation of their catalytic ability as chiral inducer in stereoselective transformations such as enantioselective transfer hydrogenation, Mannich reaction, Friedel-Crafts reaction, etc. The chiral backbone for phosphoric acid organocatalyst is proposed to derive from bisfluorene skeleton. This C2 symmetric flexible biaryl, bisfluorendiol, becomes conformationally rigid once converted to phosphoric acid. The precursor, tetrol, required to prepare chiral C2 symmetric flexible biaryl, bisfluorendiol, can be easily synthesized from optically active BINOL-3,3′-dicarboxylic acid. We have already developed an efficient and simple protocol for the resolution of (±)-BINOL-3,3′-dicarboxylic acid using optically active trans-1,2-cyclohexandiamine.