Base-mediated cascade amidination/N-alkylation of amines by alcohols

A base-mediated cascade amidination/N-alkylation reaction of amines by alcohols has been developed. For the first time, nitriles have been identified as an efficient and benign water acceptor reagent inN-alkylation. Notably, the procedure tolerates a series of functional groups, such as methoxyl, halo, vinyl and hetero groups, providing a convenient method to construct different substituted diamino compounds,N-15 labeled amine and could be scaled up to 1 mol scale offering 138.7 g of the desired product in good yield in one-pot. Mechanistic studies provided strong evidence for the amidination of amines with nitriles facilitated byt-BuOK.