Abstract
One of the most powerful approaches for the formation of simple and complex chiral molecules is the metal-catalysed asymmetric allylic alkylation. This reaction has been broadly studied with a great variety of substrates and nucleophiles under different reaction conditions and it has promoted the synthesis of new chiral ligands to be evaluated as asymmetric inductors. Although the mechanism as well as the active species equilibria are known, the performance of the catalytic system depends on the fine tuning of factors such as type of substrate, nucleophile nature, reaction medium, catalytic precursor and type of ligand used. Particularly interesting are chiral phosphines which have proved to be effective asymmetric inductors in several such reactions. The present review covers the application of phosphine-donor ligands in Pd-catalysed asymmetric allylic alkylation in the last decade.