Prof. Li rationally designed and synthesize a tunable chiral 2,2'-bipyridine scaffold SBpy,  and its effectiveness was demonstrated in the first highly enantioselective Ni -catalyzed addition of aryl halides to aldehydes. The approach is more step-economic than conventional strategies and allowed the preparation of various diaryl carbinols without the need to use preformed metallic reagents.

Financial support was provided by the NSFC and the Shaanxi Provincial Science and Technology Department. The first unit of the paper is FIST.

The full test of the paper can be viewed at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.202117843.

More information about Prof. Pengfei Li's group can be viewed at https://gr.xjtu.edu.cn/web/lipengfei/home.