Prof. Dohyun Ryu’s Research Team, Developed Chiral Amino Alcohol Synthesis Method Using Visible-light

- developed an eco-friendly way to synthesize chiral amino alcohol compound which is useful for a pharmaceutical intermediate product

[Image1] Prof. Dohyun Ryu, Ph.D. student Jaeyeon Kim 

The research team of Dohyun Ryu, a professor of Chemistry, announced that they successfully developed a novel asymmetric synthesis method of amino alcohol using Lewis acid catalyst under the visible-light.

A visible-light is a clean energy that is infinite and does not cause environmental pollution, and plants convert light into chemical energy through photosynthesis and synthesize carbohydrate with chirality. These kind of study of converting light into chemical energy in the same way as plants has long been of interest to many researchers, especially the synthesis of chiral organic compounds with photochemical reactions using visible-light has been considered very difficult and important.

The reactions of adding radicals to unsaturated aldehyde have published various research results by leading overseas research groups, but the method of adding radical under the condition of visible-light and synthesize chiral amino alcohol has been very difficult and has never been reported.

In this study, the team synthesized chiral amino alcohol with high yield and stereoselectivity through the radical addition reaction using Lewis acid catalyst and sensitizer in visible-light or fluorescent light. The developed reaction is eco-friendly because it uses simple structural starting materials and uses visible-light or fluorescent lights.

Prof. Dohyun Ryu said “The development of a stereoselective photochemical synthesis between molecules using visible-light is only in the beginning stage. This study has high value because it uses catalysts to synthesize amino alcohol with high levels of yield and stereotactic selectivity under visible-light or fluorescent lights, and to present various experiments that can identify the reaction mechanism.”

This research was supported by Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and National Research Foundation of Korea. The Ph. D. student, Jaeyeon Kim, participated as a first author.

The study result was published in a world-renowned journal ‘ACS Catalysis (IF = 12.35)' on September 18 (Fri) and selected as the cover paper.

[Image 2] The cover image of the study published in ‘ACS Catalysis (IF = 12.35)’ (2020.09.18.); Chiral amino alcohol compound is produced from aldehydes and amine radicals, as in plants that photosynthesize using visible-light.

[Image 3] synthesizing chiral amino alcohol using visible-light

[Image 4] efficient synthesis of chiral amino alcohol through radical addition reaction under fluorescent lights