Organocatalytic Enantioselective Synthesis of Atropisomeric Aryl-p-Quinones: Platform Molecules for Diversity-Oriented Synthesis of Biaryldiols.

Presented here is a class of novel axially chiral aryl-p-quinones as platform molecules for the preparation of non-C2 symmetric biaryldiols. Two sets of aryl-p-quinone frameworks were synthesized with remarkable enantiocontrol by means of chiral phosphoric acid catalyzed enantioselective arylation of p-quinones by central-to-axial chirality conversion. These aryl-p-quinones were then used to access a wide spectrum of highly functionalized non-C2 symmetric biaryldiols with excellent retention of the enantiopurity.