A Chiral Electrophilic Selenium Catalyst for Highly Enantioselective Oxidative Cyclization

Chiral electrophilic selenium catalysts have been applied to catalytic asymmetric transformations of alkenes over the past two decades. However, highly enantioselective reactions with a broad substrate scope have not yet been developed. We report the first successful example of this reaction employing a catalyst based on a rigid indanol scaffold, which can be easily synthesized from a commercially available indanone. The reaction efficiently converts, beta,gamma-unsaturated carboxylic acids into various enantioenriched gamma-butenolides under mild conditions.