Practical Singly and Doubly Electrophilic Aminating Agents: A New, More Sustainable Platform for Carbon–Nitrogen Bond Formation

Given the importance of amines in a large number of biologically active natural products, active pharmaceutical ingredients, agro­chemicals, and functional materials, the development of efficient C–N bond-forming methods with wide substrate scope continues to be at the frontier of research in synthetic organic chemistry. Here, we present a general and fundamentally new synthetic approach for the direct, transition-metal-free preparation of symmetrical and unsymmetrical diaryl-, aryl­alkyl-, and dialkyl­amines that relies on the facile single or double addition of readily available C-nucleo­philes to the nitrogen atom of bench-stable electro­philic aminating agents. Practical single and double polarity reversal (i.e., umpolung) of the nitrogen atom is achieved using sterically and electronically tunable keto­malonate-derived imines and oximes. Overall, this novel approach represents an operationally simple, scalable, and environmentally friendly alternative to transition-metal-catalyzed C–N cross-coupling methods that are currently used to access structurally diverse secondary amines.