Luca Massaro
Part of my research is focused on the preparation of chiral Ir-N,P complexes to be employed as catalysts in the asymmetric hydrogenation of various classes of olefins. Thiazole, imidazole and oxazoline based ligands have been synthesized and were successfully used in the enantioselective hydrogenations. (figure 1)
In my first period here, my research focused on the convergent asymmetric hydrogenation of enamides. We managed to hydrogenate mixtures of isomers; usually E and Z isomers present different enantioselectivity (see scheme 2a), into the corresponding hydrogenated product with high enantioselectivity (scheme 2b). We also studied the mechanistic pathway via deuterium and kinetic studies, revealing an interesting ability of our ligand, which concern the possibility to isomerize the olefins in the reaction environment.
