Efficient Lewis Acids Catalyzed Aza-Michael Reactions of Enones with Carbamates

The β-amino carbonyl functionality is not only a segment of biologically important natural products but also a versatile intermediate for the synthesis of nitrogen-containing compounds.1 The development of novel synthetic methods leading to β-amino ketone, β-amino acids or their derivatives has attracted much attention in organic synthesis.2 Among the traditional methods for generating β-amino carbonyl compounds, Mannich-type reaction is one of the classical and powerful methods.3 However,…

Efficient Lewis Acids Catalyzed Aza-Michael Reactions of Enones with Carbamates

The a-amino carbonyl functionality is not only a segment of biologically important natural products but also a versatile intermediate for the synthesis of nitrogen-containing compounds.1 The development of novel synthetic methods leading to a-amino ketone, a-amino acids or their derivatives has attracted much attention in organic synthesis.2 Among the traditional methods for generating a-amino carbonyl compounds, Mannich-type reaction is one of the classical and powerful methods.3 However, the classic Mannich reaction presents serious disadvantages, for example, there is still a drawback in that the silyl enolates have to be prepared from the corresponding carbonyl compounds. Alternatively, aza-Michael additions can be used to create carbon-heteroatom bonds by reaction of a,a-unsaturated carbonyl compounds with amines. Although recent advances have made this route more attractive, development of cheaper, simpler, and more efficient metal catalyst, especially which can be applied to chalcone, is highly desirable.In this paper, we demonstrated that the first aza-Michael reaction of chalcone with a less nucleophilic carbamates can be accomplished on Me3SiCFFeCl3 catalyst system under very mild conditions. Apart from experimental simplicity, the advantages of this methodology are the use of a very cheap Lewis acid catalyst and the insensitivity of the reaction mixture towards air and moisture.catalyst for aza-Michael reaction of chalcone and cyclic enones with carbamates. And with the cyclic enones with carbamates in dichloromethane at room temperature were also investigated. In this conjugate addition reaction, good to excellent yields of a-amino ketones were obtained with system could also mediates aza-Michael addition of carbamates to chalcone and derivatives.These new strategies opened efficient procedures for the synthesis of a-amino ketones under mild conditions.