The role of attractive dispersion interaction in promoting the catalytic activity of asymmetric hydrogenation†

As an essential van der Waals interaction, the dispersion interaction is an important weak attractive interaction. However, the influence of the weak attractive interactions has only recently been elucidated in transition metal catalyzed asymmetric hydrogenations by the Wanbin Zhang group. Our IGM/EDA analysis proves Zhang's finding that attractive interactions play an important role in asymmetric hydrogenation, which provides new strategies for the sophisticated design of chiral transition metal catalysts. The dispersion interaction is the major weak attractive interaction that activates the asymmetric hydrogenations by favorable interactions of substrate and metal catalyst.