Chiral auxiliaries as emerging tools for the asymmetric synthesis of octahedral metal complexes

Abstract

New methods for the stereocontrolled synthesis of octahedral metal complexes are needed in order to fully exploit the stereochemical richness of the octahedron in the fields of catalysis, materials sciences, and life sciences. Whereas a large body of work exists regarding the diastereoselective coordination chemistry with chiral ligands, such efforts are restricted to certain carefully designed chiral ligands which remain in the coordination sphere. The emerging strategy of chiral-auxiliary-mediated asymmetric synthesis holds promise to solve the problem of controlling relative and absolute configuration in octahedral metal complexes in a general fashion, thus hopefully in the future providing access to any desired optical active octahedral metal complex without the need for chiral separations. This short review will summarize reported examples of chiral auxiliaries applied to the asymmetric synthesis of octahedral metal complexes.