Abstract
Because of the increasing importance of optically active epoxides in biological and pharmaceutical chemistry as well as in organic syntheses, the asymmetric epoxidation reaction was selected from less-developed asymmetric oxidation reactions, and the possible exploitation of the asymmetric epoxidation catalysts was investigated. Two types of the chiral molybdenum (VI) catalysts (1 and 2) involving optically active N-alkyl-β-aminoalcohols (9 and 10) as stable chiral ligands and acetylacetone as a replaceable bidentate ligand, were designed, based on the proposed mechanism for the epoxidation of allylic alcohols with alkyl hydroperoxides which could be catalyzed by metal complexes. Although attempted preparations of the former metal complexes (1) were unsuccessfull, the latter molybdenum (VI) complexes (2b-d) were successfully synthe-sized by the ligand exchange reaction of molybdenum dioxyacetylacetonate [MoO2 (acac)2] (3) with (1R, 2S)-N-alkylephedrines (10b-d).
