Xiaochun Yu

Iron-Catalyzed Direct Synthesis of Imines from Amines or Alcohols and Amines via Aerobic Oxidative Reactions under Air

Abundant and cheap iron readily catalyzed the aerobic oxidative reactions of primary amines, secondary amines, benzylamines with anilines, and alcohols with amines by directly using air as the economic and safe oxidant, providing several direct, practical, and greener approaches for the preparation of useful imines.

Direct and mild palladium-catalyzed aerobic oxidative synthesis of imines from alcohols and amines under ambient conditions.

By ligand, TEMPO, and base screening, we developed a mild and green one-pot imine synthesis from alcohols and amines via a low-loading palladium-catalyzed tandem aerobic alcohol oxidation-dehydrative condensation reaction that can be readily carried out in open air at room temperature.

Manganese Dioxide Catalyzed N-Alkylation of Sulfonamides and Amines with Alcohols under Air

By simply running the reactions under air and solvent-free conditions using catalytic amounts of manganese dioxide, a practical and efficient N-alkylation method for a variety of sulfonamides and amines using alcohols as green alkylating reagents was developed.

Discovery and Mechanistic Studies of a General Air-Promoted Metal-Catalyzed Aerobic N-Alkylation Reaction of Amides and Amines with Alcohols

The thermodynamically unfavorable anaerobic dehydrogenative alcohol activation to aldehydes and hydridometal species is found to be the bottleneck in metal-catalyzed N-alkylations due to a general and unnoticed catalyst deactivation by amines/amides. Thus, different from the anaerobic dehydrogenation process in borrowing hydrogen or hydrogen autotransfer reactions that require noble metal complexes or addition of capricious ligands for catalyst activation, the water-producing, exothermic, metal-catalyzed aerobic alcohol oxidation is thermodynamically more favorable and the most effective and advantageous aldehyde generation protocol. This leads to a general and advantageous air-promoted metal-catalyzed aerobic N-alkylation methodology that effectively uses many simpler, less expensive, more available, and ligand-free metal catalysts that were inactive under typical anaerobic borrowing hydrogen conditions, avoiding the use of preformed metal complexes and activating ligands and the exclusive requirement of inert atmosphere protection. This aerobic method is quite general in substrate scope and tolerates various amides, amines, and alcohols, revealing its potentially broad utilities and interests in academy and industry. In contrast to the commonly accepted borrowing hydrogen mechanism, based on a thorough mechanistic study and supported by the related literature background, a new mechanism analogous to the relay race game that has never been proposed in metal-catalyzed N-alkylation reactions is presented.

Selective catalytic Hofmann N-alkylation of poor nucleophilic amines and amides with catalytic amounts of alkyl halides

Using only catalytic amounts of alkyl halides in the reactions of poor nucleophilic amines/amides and alcohols led to a selective Hofmann N-alkylation reaction catalytic in alkyl halides, providing a practical and efficient method for the practical synthesis of mono- or di-alkylated amines/amides in high selectivities. This new method avoids the use of large amounts of bases, alkyl halides, and solvents, and generates water as the only byproduct. Preliminary mechanistic studies showed that alkyl halides are key intermediates/catalysts regeneratable in the reaction cycle.