Diamagnetic lanthanide tris beta-diketonates as organic-soluble chiral NMR shift reagents.

Diamagnetic lanthanium(III) and lutetium(III) tris beta-diketonate complexes of 3-(trifluoroacetyl)-d-camphor, 3-(heptafluorobutyryl)-d-camphor, and d,d-dicampholylmethane are shown to be effective chiral NMR shift reagents for determining the enantiomeric purity of compounds with hard Lewis base functional groups. These include substrates with amine, alcohol, epoxide, sulfoxide, and oxaxolidine moieties. Enantiomeric discrimination is observed in the (1)H NMR spectrum. Diamagnetic lanthanide complexes represent an alternative to paramagnetic varieties that often cause too much line broadening in the NMR spectra. The choice of which metal to use varies with substrate. Similarly, there is no consistent trend with ligand as not one of the complexes is consistently better than the others for all substrates. The enantiomeric discrimination also varies with solvent. Comparisons show that the chiral recognition was usually larger in benzene-d(6) than in chloroform-d or cyclohexane-d(12). (c) 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc.