Rational electronic tuning of CBS catalyst for highly enantioselective borane reduction of trifluoroacetophenone.

α,α,α-Trifluoroacetophenone (2), which is susceptible to noncatalytic reduction by BH(3), could be reduced to chiral alcohol up to 90% ee by using electronically tuned-CBS catalyst (1) with BH(3). The enantioselectivities highly correlated with the differential orbital energies between 1-BH(3) adduct and 2, which were calculated by DFT method.