Issue 45, 2019

Hydration of nitriles using a metal–ligand cooperative ruthenium pincer catalyst

Abstract

Nitrile hydration provides access to amides that are important structural elements in organic chemistry. Here we report catalytic nitrile hydration using ruthenium catalysts based on a pincer scaffold with a dearomatized pyridine backbone. These complexes catalyze the nucleophilic addition of H2O to a wide variety of aliphatic and (hetero)aromatic nitriles in tBuOH as solvent. Reactions occur under mild conditions (room temperature) in the absence of additives. A mechanism for nitrile hydration is proposed that is initiated by metal–ligand cooperative binding of the nitrile.

Graphical abstract: Hydration of nitriles using a metal–ligand cooperative ruthenium pincer catalyst

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
13 Sep 2019
Accepted
04 Oct 2019
First published
07 Oct 2019
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Chem. Sci., 2019,10, 10647-10652

Hydration of nitriles using a metal–ligand cooperative ruthenium pincer catalyst

B. Guo, J. G. de Vries and E. Otten, Chem. Sci., 2019, 10, 10647 DOI: 10.1039/C9SC04624K

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements