The gold-catalyzed enantioselective hydroazidation and hydroamination reactions of allenes are presented herein. ADC gold(I) catalysts derived from BINAM were critical for achieving high levels of enantioselectivity in both transformations. The sense of enantioinduction is reversed for the two different nucleophiles, allowing access to both enantiomers of the corresponding allylic amines using the same catalyst enantiomer.
Graphical AbstractChiral allylic azides and amines may be obtained by enantioselective hydroazidation and hydroamination of allenes catalyzed by acyclic diaminocarbene gold(I) catalysts derived from BINAM. The sense of enantioinduction is reversed for the two different nucleophiles, allowing easy access to both enantiomers with a single catalyst enantiomer.
Keywordshydroazidation; hydroamination; enantioselective; gold catalysis; acyclic diaminocarbene Allylic amines are an important functional motif in synthetic organic chemistry and they have been utilized in the synthesis of numerous biologically active compounds. [1] Closely related allylic azides are valuable precursors for allylic amines, as well as for amino acids [2] Correspondence to: F. Dean Toste, fdtoste@berkeley.edu.
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Author Manuscript Author ManuscriptAuthor ManuscriptAuthor Manuscript and amine-containing natural products. [3] Allylic azides have typically been prepared via substitution reactions from the corresponding allylic halides, (homo)allylic alcohols, and their derivatives. [4] More recently, Pd-catalyzed C-H activation, [5] and Au-catalyzed hydroazidation of allenes [6] have been employed.While reports of the synthesis of allylic azides are numerous, methods for asymmetric azidation are few. [7] Fewer still are enantioselective hydroazidation reactions, which have only been reported in a formal sense via conjugate addition to activated double bonds (Scheme 1). [8][9][10] In light of recent examples of transition-metal catalysed asymmetric additions of nitrogen nucleophiles to allenes [11] and the growing utility of organic azides, we sought to develop a gold(I)-catalyzed enantioselective hydroazidation of allenes. Cognizant of potential regioselectivity issues from the Winstein rearrangement [12] of the product allylic azides, we initiated our studies using aryl allene 3a. [13] Initial studies revealed that the use of ethereal solvents was critical to obtaining reproducible data. [14] With the choice of solvent established, the enantioinduction afforded by a number of chiral gold(I) catalysts was evaluated under conditions similar to those previously reported, with trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) and trimethylsilyl azide (TMSN 3 ) used for in situ generation of hydrazoic acid (Table 2). [6] Traditional chiral phosphine gold(I) catalysts failed to afford high levels of enantioinduction (entries 1,2) as did a previously reported [15] phosphoramidite catalyst (entry 3). Chiral NHC gold(I) catalysts [16] (entries 4-6) also were found to be unsatisfactory. However, the use of a BINAM-derived ADC gold...