More recently such ligands have attracted attention from a catalytic point of view because of the tunable basicities associated with the ligating nitrogen. 5 and 6 A change in ligand basicity has a marked effect on metal–ligand bond strengths, which in turn effect the catalytic properties. Recently Busacca et al., have shown the influence of N-substitution versus catalytic activities with phosphinoimidazolines in palladium catalyzed asymmetric Heck reactions. 7 To our knowledge no such studies ...
