Novel Asymmetric Transfer Hydrogen Catalyst "DENEBTM"
Development of Asymmetric Transfer Hydrogenation Catalyst
“DENEBTM;Oxo-Tethered Ruthenium(II) Complex“
― Highly efficient catalytic asymmetric reduction without hydrogen ―
Fine chemicals division at Takasago International Corp developed highly efficient asymmetric transfer hydrogenation catalysts, “DENEBTM; Oxo-Tethered Ruthenium(II) Complex”.
1. Purpose
Catalytic Asymmetric transfer hydrogenation has been recognized as an important technology to manufacture pharmaceutical, fragrance and agricultural chemicals without hydrogen.
Conventional technology, RuCl (arene)(N-sulfonylated diamine), has been used to produce optically pure alcohols and widely contributing to chemical industries.
However, large consumption of catalyst and limit of applicable substrates have been known as disadvantage of the technology, and chemical industries have been waiting for new technologies to improve the existing issues.
While Takasago has been improving existing technologies and developing new products with the conventional technology, Takasago has been also working on development of high performance catalyst exceeding the conventional technologies.
As the results of our enthusiasm in development of new catalysts, Takasago developed new higher performance catalyst well exceeding the performance of RuCl (arene)(N-sulfonylated diamine).
2. Advantage
(1) This new catalyst succeeded advantages of conventional asymmetric transfer hydrogenation catalyst such as; 1) Easy handling 2) No hydrogen 3) No special equipment such as autoclave
(2) Significant reduction of catalyst loading
Catalyst loading will be cut down to max. 1/60, which will enable to lower catalyst cost and reduce residual Ru in products.
(3) Higher enantioselectivity and wider range of applicable substrates
This new catalyst can be used to substrates which conventional catalysts can not be used.
The result of DENEB™ catalyst were co-published with Prof. Takao Ikariya on electric version of Journal of the American Chemical Society (DOI: 10.1021/ja207283t).