To investigate the influence of pull-substitution on the regioselectivity of dissymmetrical pull-pull alkenes, we tested the reaction between 3-substituted oxindole
A1 and
β-nitroacrylate
D1. However, as shown in
Table 2, under the above optimal condition using
L/Sc(OTf)
3 and Et
3N, α-selective addition product
E1 and its diastereoisomer
E1′ were observed in good yield but with dramatically dropped enantioselectivity (
Table 2, entry 1). The use of other
N, N′-dioxide ligands (see Supporting information for details), such as
L and
L, gave nearly equal amount of diastereoisomers in poor enantioselectivity (entries 2 and 3). Interestingly, when less steric aniline-based
L, or phenylmethanamine-based
L used (
Fig. 1), better enantioselectivity for every product was observed (entries 4 and 5). When aliphatic amine-based ligands employed, the yields of major product
E1 increased obviously (entries 6 and 7). Especially, the tertbutyl amine-based ligand
L gave the product
E1 in 58% yield with 87%
ee, and the product
E1′ in 23% yield with 82%
ee (entry 7). Less amount of base is beneficial to the formation of
α-selective product
E1 (entries 8 and 9), which could be isolated in 75% yield with 93%
ee with 0.1 equiv. of Et
3N after prolonged reaction time at 0 ℃ (see Supporting information for details), and the minor diastereoisomer
E1′ was also obtained in 21% yield with 92%
ee (entry 9). While if without base, the reaction did not occur and in the absence of DBU the nitro-group maintained in the products without elimination. The formal alkenylation products
via elimination of nitro-group in the presence of DBU could be afforded without obvious erosion of the enantioselectivity from both α-selective addition product
E1 and
E1′ (Eq. 1), yielding the same formal alkenylation product
F1 with identical absolute configuration which showed that the diastereoselectivity raised from the
α-position of nitroacrylate.