Chiral Cationic Platinum Complexes: New Catalysts for The Activation of Carbon-Carbon Multiple Bonds Towards Nucleophilic Enantioselective Attack

The concept of π-acid catalysis has emerged as a powerful principle for the chemists to create diversity and originality from simple molecules. Carbophilic late transition metals such as gold or platinum have appeared as fascinating catalysts able to activate alkenes, alkynes and other unsaturated derivatives towards anti nucleophilic addition via complexation on a single empty coordination site. Tunable chiral square-planar cationic platinum complexes created by combination of a mono- and a bidentate ligand appear as a new class of highly promising asymmetric catalytic systems. This highlight intends to stress the potential applications in enantioselective catalytic reactions associated with a variety of chiral cationic tricoordinated platinum complexes recently described in the literature.