Axially chiral guanidine as enantioselective base catalyst for 1,4-addition reaction of 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds with conjugated nitroalkenes.

A new strategy for designing chiral guanidine molecules is presented, which features the introduction of an axially chiral binaphthyl backbone. The axially chiral guanidine catalysts thus developed facilitated the highly enantioselective 1,4-addition reaction of 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds with a broad range of conjugated nitroalkenes and showed extremely high catalytic activity.