Assembled enantioselective catalysts for carbonyl-ene reactions

A new strategy for generating assembled polymeric chiral titanium complexes using linked bis-BINOL ligands have been developed, and the assembled catalysts showed excellent enantioselectivity (up to 96.5% ee) for carbonyl-ene reaction under heterogeneous conditions to afford corresponding α-hydroxy esters in high yield. The linkers between two BINOL units of the ligands in the assembled catalysts were found to have significant impact on the enantioselectivity of reaction, which demonstrated the importance of the supramolecular structures of the assemblies for their catalytic behaviours.