Cyclohexylamines are important intermediates in chemical industry, which are currently produced from petrochemical sources. Phenols, however, are an attractive sustainable feedstock. We here demonstrate the transformation of phenols with ammonia to primary cyclohexylamines. In contrast to previously reported chemistry which used palladium catalysts, we here show that rhodium is an excellent catalyst for the formation of primary cyclohexylamines. Different parameters were studied and it was shown that the reaction is applicable to a scope of phenolic compounds providing high selectivity.

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Only few dynamic kinetic resolution (DKR) systems are known for chiral aliphatic amines due to the difficult racemization of these amines.

The chemoenzymatic dynamic kinetic resolution of β-amino esters is established after detailed evaluation of metal-based heterogeneous catalysts for racemization and enzyme catalysts for kinetic resolution. Several heterogeneous palladium catalysts proved...