Reduction of Vinyl Phenyl Sulfones with Bisphosphine Monoxide Ligands

Significance

Quite recently, Carretero and co-workers have reported the asymmetric conjugate reduction of β,β-disubstituted vinyl 2-pyridyl sulfones (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2007, 46, 3329). However, this methodology is unsuitable for the reduction of the corresponding phenyl sulfones. The authors found that a copper-phosphine catalyzed hydro­silylation of vinyl phenyl sulfones gave the corresponding products in excellent yields and ee values. Furthermore, this system shows good tolerance for aromatic as well as cyclic and acyclic alkyl-substituted substrates.