Recent Advances in Synthesis of Chiral Tertiary Amines via Asymmetric Catalysis Involving Metal-Hydride Species

Chiral tertiary amines, as a class of important skeleton, exist in various drugs, natural products, and organic functional materials. Therefore, the development of efficient synthetic methods for the preparation of chiral tertiary amines has attracted much attention from chemists and become one of the research hotspots in recent years. Until now, several asymmetric catalytic methods involving metal-hydride species have been developed. According to different reaction types, the research progress in recent years is summarized from four aspects: asymmetric hydroamination, asymmetric hydrogenation, asymmetric reductive amination, and asymmetric amination of alcohols via the `borrowing hydrogen' strategy. At the same time, the corresponding reaction mechanism of each strategy is introduced, and the future development of this field is envisioned.