The concept of prochirality leads to the nomenclature of the individual faces of a molecule and plays a crucial role in the enantioselective reaction. It is a concept where two or more achiral molecules react to produce chiral products. A typical process is the reaction of an achiral ketone to generate a chiral alcohol. Here, the achiral reactant reacts with an achiral reducing agent, sodium borohydride, to generate an equimolar mixture of the chiral enantiomers of the product. For example, an...

On the basis of mirror symmetry, stereoisomers of an organic molecule can be further classified into diastereomers and enantiomers. Diastereomers are stereoisomers that are not mirror images of each other. Substituted alkenes, such as the cis and trans isomers of 2-butene, are diastereomers, as these molecules exhibit different spatial orientations of their constituent atoms, are not mirror images of each other, and do not interconvert. Here, the interconversion is suppressed due to...

Stereochemistry is the study of the different spatial arrangements of atoms in a given molecule. The stereochemistry of radical halogenations can be understood from three different situations:
Halogenation to form a new chiral center:

Chirality is most prevalent in carbon-based tetrahedral compounds, but this important facet of molecular symmetry extends to sp3-hybridized nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur centers, including trivalent molecules with lone pairs. Here, the lone pair behaves as a functional group in addition to the other three substituents to form an analogous tetrahedral center that can be chiral.
A consequence of chirality is the need for enantiomeric resolution. While this is theoretically possible for all...

The Diels–Alder reaction is one of the robust methods for synthesizing unsaturated six-membered rings. The reaction involves a concerted cyclic movement of six π electrons: four π electrons from the diene and two π electrons from the dienophile.

The naming of enantiomers employs the Cahn–Ingold–Prelog rules that involve assigning priorities to different substituent groups at a chiral center. Each enantiomer, being a distinct molecule, is assigned a unique name by the Cahn–Ingold–Prelog (CIP) rules, also called the R–S system. The prefix R- or S- attached to the chiral centers in an enantiomer is dependent on the spatial arrangement of the four substituents on the chiral center. The R–S system...