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A green chemistry perspective on catalytic amide bond formation

Nature Catalysis volume 2, pages 10–17 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

The synthesis of amides is of widespread importance, and there has been considerable recent interest in the development of catalytic methods to access these molecules. In this Perspective, we provide an overview of the current state of the art in amide synthesis, and assess new catalytic amide formation methods in the context of efficiency and sustainability. The advantages and disadvantages of catalytic approaches are highlighted and areas for future research are identified.

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Fig. 1: Methods for amide synthesis.
Fig. 2: Analysis of methods currently used for the preparation of amides.
Fig. 3: Catalytic direct amidation reactions.
Fig. 4: Alternative catalytic amidation approaches.

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Data availability

All data analysed in this article are included in the Supplementary Information (SI) file.

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Acknowledgements

M.T.S. would like to acknowledge financial support for a postdoctoral position from UCL via the EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (EP/R511638/1), and for a PhD studentship from UCL and GSK. L.T.B and H.F.S would like to thank K. Wheelhouse (GSK) for initial work on GSK portfolio reaction classification.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, University College London, London, UK

    Marco T. Sabatini & Tom D. Sheppard

  2. GSK, Medicines Research Centre, Gunnels Wood Road, Stevenage, UK

    Lee. T. Boulton & Helen F. Sneddon

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  1. Marco T. Sabatini
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Contributions

M.T.S. and T.D.S wrote the manuscript and collected and analysed the Reaxys dataset, L.T.B and H.F.S. collected and analysed the large-scale amidation dataset and contributed to the writing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Tom D. Sheppard.

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Supplementary Data 1

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Sabatini, M.T., Boulton, L.T., Sneddon, H.F. et al. A green chemistry perspective on catalytic amide bond formation. Nat Catal 2, 10–17 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-018-0211-5

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