Configurational control in stereochemically pure ligands and metal complexes for asymmetric catalysis

Enantioselective synthesis relies on suitable chiral mediators, which, in many cases, owe their stereochemical information to chiral ligands coordinated to metals. Like nature, which uses (diastereomerically pure) enzymes with several stereogenic centers to catalyze biological processes, chemists, for their purposes, tend more and more to turn their attention towards ligands and metal complexes with more than one stereogenic center or element of chirality. Selected issues of the resulting diastereomeric interactions as well as the advantages that result from the use of such complexes in catalysis are presented and discussed here.