Biphenyl-cis-diol chemistry to access enantiopure aryl-substituted organoiron complexes

The endo face selectivity of the complexation of the biologically derived 3-phenyl-1,2-dihydroxycyclohexa-3,5-diene ligand has been proved by an X-ray crystallographic study of the enantiopure (1R,2S,3S) η4 tricarbonyliron complex, and the correlation between the absolute configuration of the complex and its circular dichroism curve has been established to provide a basis on which to assign absolute configurations in the synthetically important [‘–(Ar)CCH–CHCH–’]Fe(CO)3 series.