Developing chiral phosphorus ligands for asymmetric hydrogenations

Chiral rigid and electron-donating phosphocyclic phosphine ligands and modular atropisomeric biaryl phosphine ligands were designed and synthesized. The performance of these chiral ligands in the asymmetric hydrogenations of prochiral dehydroamino acid deriv- atives, enamides, imines, keto esters, and ketones has been demonstrated to be excellent.