Two isolated intermediates of the Tröger's base: synthesis and mechanism

By controlling the amount of catalyst 1-methyl-3-(2-(sulfooxy)ethyl)-1H-imidazol-3-ium chloride, two new intermediates of Tröger's bases (11, 1,6-dimethyl-3-(4-methylphenyl)-1,4-dihydroquinazolin-3-ium tetrafluoroborate and 12, 8-methyl-2,5-bis-(4-methylphenyl)-3,5,6,7-tetrahydropyrimido[5,6,1-ij]quinazoline-2-ium tetrafluoroborate) were simply obtained from the one-pot reaction of aromatic amine and formaldehyde in ionic liquid at ambient temperature. These results support the mechanism for Tröger's base formation supposed by Fernando Coelho and co-workers. However, the crystal structure of 12 and correlative quantum chemistry calculation results are not reconciled with their report.