Rhodium(III)-Catalyzed Asymmetric Access to Spirocycles through C-H Activation and Axial-to-Central Chirality Transfer

Axial-to-central chirality transfer is an important strategy to construct chiral centers, where the axially chiral reagents are mostly limited to atropomerically stable ones. Reported herein is a Rh-III-catalyzed enantioselective spiroannulative synthesis of nitrones. The coupling proceeds via C-H arylation to give an atropomerically metastable biaryl, followed by intramolecular dearomative trapping under oxidative conditions with high degree of chirality transfer.