Functional-Group-Tolerant, Silver-Catalyzed N–N Bond Formation by Nitrene Transfer to Amines

Silver(I) promotes the highly chemoselective N-amidation of tertiary amines under catalytic conditions to form aminimides by nitrene transfer from PhI═NTs. Remarkably, this transformation proceeds in a selective manner in the presence of olefins and other functional groups without formation of the commonly observed aziridines or C–H insertion products. The methodology can be applied not only to rather simple tertiary amines but also to complex natural molecules such as brucine or quinine, where the products derived from N–N bond formation were exclusively formed. Theoretical mechanistic studies have shown that this selective N-amidation reaction proceeds through triplet silver nitrenes.