An achiral manganese salen catalyst encapsulated in a peptidic phosphonate homochiral solid for the enantioselective formation of diols by consecutive epoxidation and hydration reactions.

An insoluble, porous, amorphous, homochiral material based on a polypeptide titanium-phosphonate scaffold with an encapsulated achiral Mn(III)-salen was prepared and characterized. Consecutive epoxidation and hydration of styrene and its derivatives by aqueous hypochlorite in THF showed the highly enantioselective (>99%) formation of styrene diol derivatives.