LAUSR

In recent years, the synthesis of amines and other nitrogen-containing motifs has been a major area of research in organic chemistry because they are widely represented in biologically active molecules. Current strategies rely on a multistep approach and require one reactant to be activated prior to the carbon–nitrogen bond formation. This leads to a reaction inefficiency and functional group intolerance. As such, a general approach to the synthesis of nitrogen-containing compounds from readily available and benign starting materials is highly desirable. Here we present a palladium-catalysed oxidative amination reaction in which the addition of the nitrogen occurs at the less-substituted carbon of a double bond, in what is known as anti-Markovnikov selectivity. Alkenes are shown to react with imides in the presence of a palladate catalyst to generate the terminal imide through trans-aminopalladation. Subsequently, olefin isomerization occurs to afford the thermodynamically favoured products. Both the scope of the transformation and mechanistic investigations are reported. Aminopalladation is a key step in a number of carbon–nitrogen bond-forming processes, but carrying out this step with intermolecular anti-Markovnikov selectivity has remained difficult. Such a process has now been developed by using an anionic palladium catalyst to generate terminal carbon–nitrogen bonds from alkenes.