Chem 242 @ Dickinson

Enough of basicity, let's make amines

Today was a day to look at various methods of making amines. It started with a brief review of two methods that we have seen before (nitriles + LAH, reducing nitro groups) and then moved on the the big issue of the day: direct amination of alkyl halides. We saw how typical reactions of ammonia with alkyl halides led to an issue with over-alkylation and then spent a fair amount of time discussing Gabriel's method for getting around the problem. The Gabriel synthesis is still the best way to make primary amines; you should be familiar with the mechanism and the theory behind the reaction sequence.

We briefly covered reductive amination of ketones (were we saw that acid/base reactions are not always the reaction of choice!) and then started to look at the Curtius Rearrangement. Your task is to figure out a reasonable Lewis structure for the azide group in the starting acyl azide.......

Have a great Parent's weekend!

posted by DCChem @ 10:17 AM