Electrostatically Enhanced Thioureas: Synthesis, Reactivity and Selectivity

Abstract

Hydrogen bonding exhibits its importance in enzyme-catalyzed chemical transformations, naturally occurring three-dimensional architectures and molecular recognition. In recent years, synthetic chemists have successfully exploited hydrogen bonds and developed many enantioselective organocatalysts. As a result, small molecule hydrogen bond donors along with organometallic species and enzymes are now recognized as playing a major role in asymmetric synthesis. Thiourea derivatives are among the most common and widely-developed hydrogen bond catalysts. Impressive results in terms of both yields and enantioselectivities in asymmetric syntheses have been obtained. A key feature in their success is the ability of these compounds to simultaneously donate two hydrogen bonds to a substrate, despite their relatively weak acidity. This provides highly stereoconfined environments when chiral moieties are incorporated into the thiourea and has made them the subject of extensive research efforts. The work described in this thesis focuses on the development of a class of positively charged acidity-enhanced thiourea catalysts which make use of an alkylated pyridinium substituent and an appropriate non-coordinating counteranion to enhance their N‒H acidities and improve their catalytic activities by orders of magnitude in a variety of transformations. A series of these catalysts have been synthesized and their reactivities in both asymmetric and non-asymmetric transformations were explored. Simple and highly efficient synthetic schemes and excellent catalytic results have been discovered for these novel species.