Dr. Daisuke Uraguchi
(Associate Professor, Graduate School of Engineering, Nagoya University)

Development of chiral organic ion pair catalysts for controlling reactive ionic intermediates

Controlling anionic species by counterions is simplest yet difficult strategy in synthetic chemistry due to ambiguous distance and angle between anions and cations. Dr. Uraguchi has demonstrated that anionic intermediates could be precisely controlled by chiral organic cations through cooperative exploitation of electrostatic and hydrogen-bonding interactions to form “structured ion pair”. Highly chemo- and stereoselective transformations were developed under the unique catalyses of P-spiro aminophosphonium salts and ammonium betaines.