Chiral Iron(II)-Catalysts within Valinol-Grafted Metal–Organic Frameworks for Enantioselective Reduction of Ketones

The development of highly efficient and enantioselective heterogeneous catalysts based on earth-abundant elements and inexpensive chiral ligands is essential for environment-friendly and economical production of optically active compounds. We report a strategy of synthesizing chiral amino alcohol-functionalized metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) to afford highly enantioselective single-site base-metal catalysts for asymmetric organic transformations. The chiral MOFs (vol-UiO) were prepared by grafting of chiral amino alcohol such as l-valinol within the pores of aldehyde-functionalized UiO-MOFs via formation of imine linkages. The metalation of vol-UiO with FeCl2 in THF gives amino alcohol coordinated octahedral FeII species of vol-FeCl(THF)3 within the MOFs as determined by X-ray absorption spectroscopy. Upon activation with LiCH2SiMe3, vol-UiO-Fe catalyzed hydrosilylation and hydroboration of a range of aliphatic and aromatic carbonyls to afford the corresponding chiral alcohols with enantiomeric excesses up to 99%. Vol-UiO-Fe catalysts have high turnover numbers of up to 15 000 and could be reused at least 10 times without any loss of activity and enantioselectivity. The spectroscopic, kinetic, and computational studies suggest iron-hydride as the catalytic species, which undergoes enantioselective 1,2-insertion of carbonyl to give an iron-alkoxide intermediate. The subsequent σ-bond metathesis between Fe–O bond and Si–H bond of silane produces chiral silyl ether. This work highlights the importance of MOFs as the tunable molecular material for designing chiral solid catalysts based on inexpensive natural feedstocks such as chiral amino acids and base-metals for asymmetric organic transformations.