Pengfei Yuan’s work has been published in Synlett! Congratulations!

Asymmetric Sulfa-Michael Addition of α,β-Unsaturated Esters/Amides Using a Chiral N-Heterocyclic Carbene as a Noncovalent Organocatalyst

Pengfei Yuan, Sixuan Meng, Jiean Chen* and Yong Huang*, Synlett 2016, 27, 1068（Invited Synlett Cluster）

We report an asymmetric sulfa-Michael reaction of α,β-unsaturated amides and esters using a chiral N-heterocyclic carbene as the HOMO-raising organocatalyst. We discovered an interesting correlation between 13C NMR shifts of substrates and ee of their products. More electron-deficient Michael acceptors afforded higher enantioselectivity.