Synthesis of hemilabile P,N-ligands with a pentane-2,4-diyl backbone

A general and convenient two-step synthetic method has been developed for the preparation of a novel class of aminoalkyl-phosphine type compounds, which involves nucleophilic ring-opening of cyclic sulfate esters. The ring-opening step was performed using several different aliphatic and aromatic amines to produce aminoalkyl sulfates that were reacted with LiPPh2 to give the corresponding P,N-ligands. The desymmetrization procedure affords an easy route to synthesize enantiomerically pure pentane-2,4-diyl based P,N-ligands with a highly tunable structure. The ligands derived from primary amines have a stereogenic N-atom that can be useful in asymmetric catalytic syntheses.