The tandem hydroamination/Meisenheimer rearrangement sequence was developed to address the issue of unfavorable reaction thermodynamics for intermolecular reactions of alkenes and to improve the scope of Cope-type hydroaminations. This tandem sequence allows intermolecular reactions of N-alkyl-N-methallylhydroxyl-amines to be energetically more favorable: the N-oxide intermediate formed via Cope-type hydroamination, which can revert to the starting materials via a Cope elimination, can form a more stable neutral product via a [2,3]-Meisenheimer rearrangement. This tandem sequence also leads to increased efficiency in intramolecular systems as illustrated by syntheses of two alkaloids (coniine and norreticuline) featuring difficult hydroamination key steps.

A photoinduced procedure for the intermolecular hydroamination of alkenes using azoles is described. This reaction occurs in modest to good yield for 6- and 7-membered cyclic alkenes. Upon irradiation at 254 nm in the presence of methyl benzoate and a small amount of triflic acid as an additive (20 mol %), imidazoles, pyrazoles, triazoles, and tetrazole can react with the alkene to afford complex Markovnikov adducts. The proposed mechanism involves photoisomerization to generate highly strained (E)-cycloalkene intermediates and (E)-cycloalkene protonation followed by reaction with the azole nucleophile. Alkene isomerization was found to be a competing side reaction under these conditions.

Metal-free, intermolecular hydroaminations are performed upon heating aryl acetylenes and MeNHNH(2) at 140 degrees C, with preferential formation of the linear, "anti-Markovnikov" hydrazones.

Examples of intramolecular alkene hydroaminations forming six-membered ring systems are rare, especially for systems in which the double bond is disubstituted. Such cyclizations have important synthetic relevance. Herein we report a systematic study of these cyclizations using recently developed Cope-type hydroamination methodologies. Difficult intramolecular alkene hydroaminations were used as key steps in syntheses of 2-epi-pumiliotoxin C, coniine, N-norreticuline and desbromoarborescidine A. This effort required the development of optimized hydroamination conditions to improve the efficiency of the cyclizations. Collectively, our results show that Cope-type cyclizations can be achieved on a variety of challenging substrates and proceed under similar conditions for both N-H and N-substituted hydroxylamines.

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