Abstract
Chiral secondary alcohols are ubiquitous synthetic building blocks for important natural products and bioactive compounds. The enantioselective addition of organozinc to aldehydes to construct chiral secondary alcohols attracts numerous interest. This work presents the finding on employment of 0.5 mol % of (-)-2-exo-morpholinoisobor- nane-10-thiol ((-)-MITH) (19) for the addition of Me2Zn to aldehydes, giving up to 94% ee at room temperature. Furthermore, when addition of Et2Zn to aldehydes was conducted at 0 oC in the presence of 0.1 mol % (-)-MITH (19), secondary alcohols was obtained in excellent enantioselectivities(71-99% ee).