N-O moiety of N-oxide has high polarity and shows excellent nucleophilicity and electrophilicity. It can form addition products with many substances, complex and coordinate with many metal ions and non-metal atoms with empty orbital. More recently, chiral and achiral N-oxides have been found to catalyze some asymmetric reactions, such as Sakurai-Hosomi, Aldol, Strecker ones as well as ring opening of epoxides and cyanosilylation of ketones. The paper was focused on the development of application of N-oxides in asymmetric catalytic reactions.

Key words: asymmetric catalysis, reaction, application, N-oxide