Prof. Bae’s Research Team, 

Unveiled the Smelling Principle of Vetiver Oil

 [Image 1] Prof. Hanyong Bae

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Prof. Hanyong Bae along with Prof. Benjamin List from the Max Planck Institute in Germany and Dr. Philip Kraft from Givaudan, a Swiss global fragrance and perfume company, revealed that the substance "(+)-2-epi-ziza-6(13)en-3-one” is the principle of the scent of Vetiver through organic synthesis.

Vetiver oil is one of the finest and most popular perfumery materials, appearing in over a third of all fragrances. It is a complex mixture of hundreds of molecules and the specific odorant, responsible for its characteristic suave and sweet transparent, woody-ambery has remained a mystery until today.

The research team successfully performed a high-performance asymmetric Michael addition reaction using the newly developed chiral organocatalyst and a total 11 levels of compounds characterized Pauson-Khand cyclization using cobalt metals.

[Image 2] Chiral organocatalyst-based asymmetric Michael addition reaction and 11 levels of compounds characterized Pauson-Khand cyclization using cobalt metals

Its olfactory evaluation reveals a remarkable odor threshold of 29 picograms per liter air. The odor of the compound possesses a transparent woody-ambery note vetiver character. These properties show that the synthesized compound is the main contributor to the typical note of vetiver oil. It revealed that the threshold of scent is more than 150 times stronger than a substance called khusimone, which was considered as the smelling principle of vetiver oil.

Prof. Bae said “It is expected that asymmetric synthesis method and organic synthesis-based technology using chiral catalyst can be widely used in various materials in the fragrance industries.”

The study result was selected as “HOT PAPER” in February 2021 by Angewandte Chemie International Edition, a renowned journal in chemistry.

※ Paper: The Smelling Principle of Vetiver Oil, Unveiled by Chemical Synthesis. (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2021, 60, 5666 –5672)