Copper‐Nitrene‐Catalyzed Desymmetric Oxaziridination/1,2‐Alkyl Rearrangement of 1,3‐Diketones toward Bicyclic Lactams

Abstract

Although copper-nitrene has been extensively studied as a versatile active species in various transformations, asymmetric reactions involving copper-nitrene have been limited to the aziridination of olefins. Herein, we report the novel copper-nitrene-catalyzed desymmetric oxaziridination reaction of cyclic diketones with alkyl azides and the subsequent rearrangement of the resulting highly active intermediate, which produces a synthetically challenging chiral bicyclic lactam containing a quaternary carbon center. This procedure not only enriches the copper-nitrene-catalyzed asymmetric reactions, but also provides an alternative strategy to address the inherent challenges of catalytic asymmetric Schmidt reactions. This unique reaction could inspire the investigation of novel copper-nitrene-catalyzed asymmetric transformations and their reaction mechanisms.Scheme 1. The outline of Cu-catalyzed asymmetric reactions involving nitrenoid intermediates.