Efficient and selective N-alkylation of amines with alcohols catalysed by manganese pincer complexes.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27708259.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms12641 and PMC identifier 5059641.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Borrowing hydrogen (or hydrogen autotransfer) reactions represent straightforward and sustainable C-N bond-forming processes. In general, precious metal-based catalysts are employed for this effective transformation. In recent years, the use of earth abundant and cheap non-noble metal catalysts for this process attracted considerable attention in the scientific community. Here we show that the selective N-alkylation of amines with alcohols can be catalysed by defined PNP manganese pincer complexes. A variety of substituted anilines are monoalkylated with different (hetero)aromatic and aliphatic alcohols even in the presence of other sensitive reducible functional groups. As a special highlight, we report the chemoselective monomethylation of primary amines using methanol under mild conditions.