Alkanes to amines by bromine

Chemists have been seeking simple ways of inserting nitrogen or other elements into alkanes — simple hydrocarbons with just single bonds — to turn them into more useful molecules, such as drugs. Now Masahito Ochiai at the University of Tokushima in Japan and his colleagues show that a reactive bromine-based compound can be used for the addition of nitrogen without the traditional need for a metal catalyst or high temperature.

They used N-triflylimino-λ³-bromane to insert nitrogen into a variety of alkanes at room temperature. Not only did this reaction achieve reasonable yields, in many cases it also selectively added nitrogen in just one of two possible positions.

Science 332, 448–451 (2011)