Aziridines ruthenium porphyrin catalyst

The aziridination of olefins, which forms a three-membered nitrogen heterocycle, is one important nitrene transfer reaction. Aziridination shows an advantage over the more classic olefin hydroamination reaction in some syntheses because the three-membered ring that is formed can be further modified. More recently, intramolecular amidation and intermolecular amination of C-H bonds into new C-N bonds has been developed with various metal catalysts. When compared with conventional substitution or nucleophilic addition routes, the direct formation of C-N bonds from C-H bonds reduces the number of synthetic steps and improves overall efficiency.2 After early work on iron, manganese, and copper,6 Muller, Dauban, Dodd, Du Bois, and others developed different dirhodium carboxylate catalyst systems that catalyze C-N bond formation starting from nitrene precursors,7 while Che studied a ruthenium porphyrin catalyst system extensively.8 The rhodium and ruthenium systems are... 

J. L. Zhang, C. M. Che, Soluble polymer-supported ruthenium porphyrin catalysts for epoxidation, cyclopropanation, and aziridination of alkenes, Org. Lett. 4 (2002) 1911. 

In terms of miscellaneous reactions associated with aziridine synthesis, a ruthenium porphyrin catalyst was reported to facilitate a unique three-component coupling of nitroarenes with alkynes and a-diazo compounds to produce multifunctional aziridines (14OL1048). Pictured below is an intriguing palladium-catalyzed C-H bond activation/amination leading to the selective transformation of an aminolactone methyl group adjacent to an unprotected secondary amine into an aziridine (14NAT129). 

Oxidative amination of carbamates, sulfamates, and sulfonamides has broad utility for the preparation of value-added heterocyclic structures. Both dimeric rhodium complexes and ruthenium porphyrins are effective catalysts for saturated C-H bond functionalization, affording products in high yields and with excellent chemo-, regio-, and diastereocontrol. Initial efforts to develop these methods into practical asymmetric processes give promise that such achievements will someday be realized. Alkene aziridina-tion using sulfamates and sulfonamides has witnessed dramatic improvement with the advent of protocols that obviate use of capricious iminoiodinanes. Complexes of rhodium, ruthenium, and copper all enjoy application in this context and will continue to evolve as both achiral and chiral catalysts for aziridine synthesis. The invention of new methods for the selective and efficient intermolecular amination of saturated C-H bonds still stands, however, as one of the great challenges. 

A review has appeared on the synthesis of enantiomerically enriched aziridines by the addition of nitrenes to alkenes and of carbenes to imines.45 A study of the metal-catalysed aziridination of imines by ethyl diazoacetate found that mam group complexes, early and late transition metal complexes, and rare-earth metal complexes can catalyse the reaction.46 The proposed mechanism did not involve carbene intermediates, the role of the metal being as a Lewis acid to complex the imine lone pah. Ruthenium porphyrins were found to be efficient catalysts for the cyclopropana-tion of styrenes 47 High diastereoselectivities in favour of the //-product were seen but the use of chiral porphyrins gave only low ees. 

Ruthenium-based catalysts display some utility for electrophilic amination of heteroaromatic substrates. Che and coworkers have found that [Ru(TTP)(CO)J in combination with PhI=NTs will oxidize arenes such as furan, indole, and pyrrole (Fig. 13) [68]. Reactions occur optimally under the action of ultrasound, a rather unusual addendum to the standard protocol for C-H amination. More intriguingly still, iV,A-ditosylated products are isolated in most instances, a finding that is not easily resolved mechanistically. As the substrate profile for this amination process involves only electron-rich heteroaromatics, aziridination of the arene nucleus would seem a likely step along the reaction coordinate. Interestingly, no amination product is observed when stoichiometric [Ru(TMP)(NTs)2] (TMP = tetra(2,4,-6-trimethylphenyl)porphyrin) is mixed with either furan or /V-phenylpyrrole. though a reduction of the starting Ru(VI) complex to a Ru(IV) species is noted... 

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