화학공학소재연구정보센터
Applied Catalysis A: General, Vol.221, No.1-2, 119-143, 2001
Enantioselective catalysis in fine chemicals production
This review describes the state of the art for the application of enantioselective catalysts for the industrial production of enantiomerically enriched chiral fine chemicals. In a certain sense it is an up-date of an overview written by Scott 10 years ago [1]. A comparison of the two articles reveals that certain aspects such as the difficulty to get precise information on industrial processes remained the same. As a consequence, many references relate to relatively informal sources such as C&EN, proceedings of commercial meetings and reviews. Other aspects, especially the state of the art in enantioselective catalysis but also the nature of the industrial players have changed. significantly in the last decade. The present overview tries to cover all enantioselective catalytic processes that have been and/or still are used for the commercial manufacture of enantioenriched intermediates. In addition, we have also tried to get information on catalytic processes not (yet) used in actual production. Another goal of the review is to give the organic chemist working in process development an impression of the synthetic opportunities of enantioselective catalysis and to impart to the production manager some understanding of the potential problems when enantioselective processes are developed. After a short introduction to the world of chirality and enantioselective catalysis, the most important production methods for enantiopure chiral molecules are described. The relevant requirements for the application of enantioselective catalysis in fine chemicals production are then discussed in order to show what factors determine whether a catalytic method can be applied successfully or not. In the next paragraphs, the major industrial players in the field of enantioselective catalysis, existing processes in production and selected examples of processes in the bench scale and pilot stage are described. In a similar way, large scale ligands and chiral auxiliaries for enantioselective catalysis and their producers are tabulated and described.