Direct Catalytic Synthesis of Unprotected Amines

The formation of C–N bonds is one of the major challenges in the preparation of bioactive molecules. The direct catalytic amination of hydrocarbons is an attractive approach to address this challenge and has been the subject of intense research efforts. However, most of the methods developed thus far lead to the installation of a protected form of the versatile primary amine group, requiring additional and often challenging protecting group manipulations. In contrast, the research program “Direct Catalytic Synthesis of Unprotected Amines” circumvents the protecting group limitation by enabling a direct access to the desired primary amine. Besides its synthetic potential, this project also addresses a fundamental challenge in catalysis, namely the synthesis of unprotected functionalized molecules that are prone to deactivating coordination of metal catalysts.