Angewandte
Chemie
Synthetic Methods
An Iodine-Catalyzed Hofmann–Lçffler Reaction**
Claudio Martínez and Kilian MuÇiz*
Dedicated to Professor Antonio Echavarren on the occasion of his 60th birthday
Abstract: Iodine reagents have been identified as economically
and ecologically benign alternatives to transition metals,
although their application as molecular catalysts in challenging
À
C H oxidation reactions has remained elusive. An attractive
iodine oxidation catalysis is now shown to promote the
convenient conversion of carbon–hydrogen bonds into
carbon–nitrogen bonds with unprecedented complete selectiv-
Scheme 1. Hofmann–Lçffler reactions: classical reaction conditions
ity. The reaction proceeds by two interlocked catalytic cycles
comprising a radical chain reaction, which is initiated by visible
light as energy source. This unorthodox synthetic strategy for
the direct oxidative amination of alkyl groups has no
biosynthetic precedence and provides an efficient and straight-
forward access to a general class of saturated nitrogenated
heterocycles.
(top) and Suµrez modification (bottom).
Although a significantly more desirable process from
a synthetic standpoint, a variant catalytic in iodine has not yet
been realized. Such a conceptually novel reaction is of
fundamental interest, since it would amount to a catalytic
À
remote C H amination of nonfunctionalized hydrocarbons
N
itrogen–halogen bonds have a long history in the synthesis
based on an iodine derivative as a benign non-metallic
catalyst. Molecular catalysis based on iodine[4] has recently
been considered an attractive, mechanistically distinct alter-
native to the far more common transition-metal catalysis,
of pyrrolidines and related heterocyclic structures through the
amination reaction of a distant carbon–hydrogen bond.[1] For
such approaches with preformed chlorinated and brominated
amines, the transformation is known as the Hofmann–Lçffler
reaction (Scheme 1, top). Despite the great attractiveness of
such an approach for the synthesis of aminated five-mem-
bered-ring compounds, the required rather harsh conditions
have prevented wider application.[1a,b] Modifications of the
common protocol include the in situ formation of the
corresponding N-iodinated amides through the combined
use of molecular iodine and a large excess of commonly
available iodine(III) reagents[2,3] with the requirement of an
external light source (Scheme 1, bottom). These reactions
usually start from compounds having electron-acceptor-sub-
stituted nitrogen groups and were employed largely in steroid
and carbohydrate chemistry.[3]
À
although truly efficient protocols for C N bond formation
remain to be developed.[5]
The required principle for such a reaction was explored
for the representative compound 1a (Table 1). Overstoichio-
metric oxidation conditions[3] could be employed; however,
changing to catalytic amounts of iodine shut down the
reaction (entries 1 and 2). This problem could be overcome
by changing the carboxylate component of the hypervalent
iodine reagent from acetate to pivalate. With this oxidant it
was possible to reduce the iodine amount to a catalytic
20 mol%, while the results remained similar to those
obtained in the stoichiometric reaction (entry 3 vs. 4). Still,
a significant excess of iodine(III) reagent was required
(entry 5). Further modification of the iodine(III) reagent to
PhI(mCBA)2 (mCBA = 3-chlorobenzoate) provided quanti-
tative yields of 2a, even when a single equivalent of this
oxidant was used (entries 6 and 7). The amount of the iodine
catalyst could be successively lowered to 2.5 mol%, without
loss in yield, and still 95% yield was obtained at a catalyst
loading of 1 mol%. Reasonable conversion was still achieved
at 0.5 mol%, while the amination no longer proceeds upon
further decrease of iodine to 0.1 mol% (entries 8–12). The
optimized conditions call for only a single equivalent of
terminal oxidant, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the
new reaction. Usually, iodine-catalyzed reactions require an
excess of terminal oxidants.[4,6] Moreover, it is noteworthy
that the catalytic use of iodine provides a significantly cleaner
reaction outcome in the oxidation of 1a than a comparable
protocol using the overstoichiometric reagent combination I2/
3PhI(OAc)2,[3f] which forms product mixtures.[7]
[*] Dr. C. Martínez, Prof. Dr. K. MuÇiz
Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ)
Av. Països Catalans 16, 43007 Tarragona (Spain)
E-mail: kmuniz@iciq.es
Prof. Dr. K. MuÇiz
Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA)
Pg. Lluís Companys 23, 08010 Barcelona (Spain)
[**] We thank Prof. Dr. J. M. Gonzµlez and Prof. Dr. P. Melchiorre for
helpful discussions and A. Bahamonde for support in the quantum
yield determination. Financial support of this project was provided
by the Cellex-ICIQ Programme (postdoctoral contract to C. M.) and
the Spanish Ministry for Economy and Competitiveness (CTQ2011-
25027 and CTQ2013-50105-EXP grants to K. M., and Severo Ochoa
Excellence Accreditation 2014–2018 to ICIQ, SEV-2013-0319).
Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2015, 54, 8287 –8291
ꢀ 2015 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
8287