COMMUNICATION
pubs.acs.org/JACS
Palladium-Catalyzed C-H Aminations of Anilides with
N-Fluorobenzenesulfonimide
Kai Sun, Yan Li, Tao Xiong, Jingping Zhang, and Qian Zhang*
Department of Chemistry, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China
S Supporting Information
b
Similar to oxime ester, an active FPdN(SO2Ph)2 species was
suggested to be formed via the oxidative addition of Pd(0) to the
N-F bond of NFSI,10 and therefore, as a starting point we
sought to use NFSI as a nitrogen source to perform palladium-
catalyzed intermolecular C-H amination reactions. As shown in
Scheme 1, we supposed that a novel electrophilic palladation of
in situ-generated FPdN(SO2Ph)2 with arene might form a
dearomatized spiro-cyclopalladium intermediate C, which could
undergo nucleophilic amination followed by hydrogen elimina-
tion to provide ortho-amination products D (path I) or para-
amination products E (path II) depending on the electronic and
steric effect of the arene substituents. In the present work, the
first amide-directed, palladium-catalyzed, intermolecular, highly
selective C-H aminations with the non-nitrene nitrogen source
NFSI were efficiently realized.
Initially, we found that N-phenylacetamide failed to undergo
the amination reaction upon treatment with Pd(OAc)2 (10 mol %)
and NFSI at 80 °C, and N-phenylacetamide was recovered
after 24 h. Starting from N-p-tolylacetamide, a benzylic amina-
tion product was obtained in 71% yield.4 Surprisingly, when
N-(40-methylbiphen-4-yl)acetamide 1a was employed, o-C-H
amination product 2a11 was obtained in 87% yield (Table 1,
entry 1). No reaction occurred in the absence of the palladium
catalyst (entry 2). KF was as effective as NaHCO3 (entry 3).
With solvents such as acetonitrile, N,N-dimethylformamide
(DMF), and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), no desired 2a was
obtained (entries 7-9). Other solvents, such as nitroethane,
dichloromethane, nitrobenzene, and chlorobenzene were not as
effective as dichloroethylene (DCE) (entries 10-13). In addi-
tion, the use of Pd(TFA)2 and Pd(dba)2 as the catalyst gave 2a in
84 and 70% yield, respectively (entries 14 and 15). It should be
noted that the transformation from 1a to 2a represents the first
palladium-catalyzed intermolecular aromatic C-H amination
with a non-nitrene nitrogen source.
ABSTRACT: The first amide-directed, palladium-catalyzed,
intermolecular, highly selective C-H aminations with the
non-nitrene-based nitrogen source N-fluorobenzenesulfon-
imide have been developed. This methodology might
provide a new pathway for directed metal-catalyzed aro-
matic C-H amination.
ransition-metal-catalyzed direct carbon-hydrogen bond
T
functionalization appears to be highly appealing, especially
if high selectivity for a unique C-H bond can be achieved.1
Accordingly, directed metalation1,2 is a powerful approach for the
selective functionalization of C-H bonds in complex substrates.
However, all previously reported directed palladium-catalyzed
C-H functionalizations of arenes provided o-C-H functiona-
lized products. Therefore, the development of new methodolo-
gies that override the popular o-C-H selectivity to realize meta
or para aromatic and benzylic C-H functionalization remains a
great challenge.3 Recently, an amide-group-directed, copper-
catalyzed m-C-H arylation reaction was reported by Gaunt
and co-workers.3a Yu and co-workers3b studied the palladium-
catalyzed m-C-H olefination of electron-deficient arenes using
2,6-dialkylpyridine ligands. In addition, our group developed an
amide-directed, palladium-catalyzed benzylic C-H amination
with N-fluorobenzenesulfonimide (NFSI).4 However, to date,
directed, metal-catalyzed, highly selective p-C-H functionaliza-
tion has not been realized.
Direct aromatic C-N bond formation is of immense interest
because aromatic amines and their derivatives are common in
pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, dyes, herbicides, and conduct-
ing polymers.5 Accordingly, the area of catalytic C-H amination
has led to significant results arising both from the discovery of
simple, efficient nitrene transfers and the combination of transi-
tion-metal-catalyzed C-H activation with C-N bond form-
ation.6 Although intramolecular oxidative aminations of arenes
with amine derivatives had been reported,7 intermolecular aro-
matic C-H amination could not be realized unless in situ-
generated, highly active nitrene intermediates were employed as
nitrogen sources (Scheme 1, amination product B).8 Recently, a
remarkably interesting work by Hartwig and co-workers9 showed
that intramolecular C-H amination via a Pd0/PdII manifold can
be achieved using a non-nitrene-based nitrogen source, oxime
ester, which contains a N-O bond as a built-in oxidant. How-
ever, the analogous intermolecular C-H amination remains a
challenge.
With the optimized conditions in hand (Table 1, entry 1), we
turned to an examination of the generality of this C-H amina-
tion reaction. As described in Table 2, the tested biphenyl
derivatives 1b-h were smoothly reacted with NFSI to afford
2b-h in moderate to good yields. In addition, with various acyl
group substrates 1i-l, 2i-l could also be obtained. Moreover,
the reaction worked with carbamate, although the yield was only
moderate. The 4-OR-substituted substrates 1m-q were also
successfully reacted with NFSI to afford 2m-q in good to
excellent yields. Starting from 4-amide-substituted substrate 1r,
2r could be obtained in 74% yield within 1.5 h. However, starting
Received: November 12, 2010
Published: January 20, 2011
r
2011 American Chemical Society
1694
dx.doi.org/10.1021/ja1101695 J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2011, 133, 1694–1697
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