Chiral oxazoline ligands have been effectively used in the asymmetric catalysis of various reactions in the past decade. However, these homogeneous catalytic systems suffer from many limitations, such as the difficulty of separation from the reaction product that may lead to economical/environmental problems especially in the case of expensive or toxic metal catalysts. Therefore, the development of insoluble complex of chiral oxazoline ligands with copper (or other metals) can be expected a great deal of attraction. According to the mentioned reasons, we became interested to synthesis of new chiral oxazoline-copper complexes and immobilize them onto mesoporous MCM-41 and then the resulting heterogeneous catalyst employed in asymmetric allylic oxidation of cycloolefins. Fortunately, the reaction exhibited good yield and moderate enantioselectivity. The catalyst was recovered and reused for at least three reaction cycles without significant change in its nanostructure as evidenced by surface analysis.
