A Rational Approach Towards a New Ferrocenyl Pyrrolidine for Stereoselective Enamine Catalysis

Ironing out the details: Proline and pyrrolidine derivatives (Hayashi– Jørgensen catalysts) are considered “work horses” in organocatalysis. This report describes a new effective ferrocenyl pyrrolidine catalyst that is able to perform well in benchmark organocatalytic reactions (see figure). The ferrocene moiety controls the conformational space and a simple alkyl group effectively covers a face of the derived enamine. This new framework can find applications in organocatalysis, and in general, in new ligand design.