Professor Jon Antilla of SPST at Tianjin University recently published a academic paper in Angewandte Chemie, named “Chiral phosphoric acid-catalyzed asymmetric synthesis of hetero-triarylmethanes from racemic indolyl alcohols”. (DOI: 10.1002/anie.201804330). The first author is PhD student Caizhen Yue, and foreign expert Jon Antilla is the advising professor.

Optically active hetero-triarylmethanes are very important structural motifs in natural products, biological active molecules and synthetic materials. Therefore, the development of efficient strategies for enantioenriched hetero-triarylmethane derivatives is of great interest to the synthetic community. This study designed a direct and broadly applicable synthetic strategy for this important structural motif. And this flexible activation mode and novel reactivity of diarylmethanols expand the synthetic potential of chiral phosphoric acids.