A general microwave-assisted procedure for the synthesis of 6-amino-b-cyclodextrins is reported. Mono-tosyl-b-cyclodextrin was used as the starting material in a one-pot route employing a solvent-free microwave-assisted reaction with a liquid amine. Shorter reaction times were observed for the formation of 6-aminob-cyclodextrins using this novel microwave approach compared to the thermal procedure.Keywords Microwave-assisted synthesis Á 6-amino-b-cyclodextrins Á Functionalised cyclodextrins Á Mono-pendant cyclodextrins Cyclodextrins (CDs) are extremely appealing for their applications in different fields in both pure and applied chemistry [1,2]. CD derivatives can be structurally manipulated by exploiting the appropriate combination of the hydrophobic nature and different sizes of the CD cavity with the specific features of the substituents attached to it. Several CD derivatives have been synthesised and reported with substituents such as amines [3][4][5], amino acids [6-8], peptides [9-11] and aromatic systems [12][13][14]. The chemical modification of CDs offers enormous opportunities, but also challenges for chemists and much effort is being directed to developing new synthetic protocols.Mono-substitution at the 6-position of b-CD has been reported extensively [15]. In particular, 6-amino-b-CDs can be synthesised from the corresponding liquid amines either by heating [18,19] in an excess of the amine.Herein a general microwave-assisted procedure for the synthesis of a nine-member library of 6-amino-b-CDs (b-CD-X) bonded through nitrogen to C6 carbon of the b-CD is reported. (Figure 1).The use of microwave irradiation (MW) in organic chemistry is becoming increasingly important [20,21]. Nevertheless, only a few papers reporting the use of MW for the modification of CDs have been published [22][23][24][25][26].We report for the first time the synthesis of a library in which liquid amines displaces the tosyl group of the 6-tosyl-b-CD. Our one-pot procedure involves nucleophilic displace of the tosyl group of 6-tosyl-b-CD with liquid amines, or aqueous ammonia solution for 2a, (in a microwave oven at 85°C and 200 W for 30 min) yielding the corresponding mono-substituted amino-CD (b-CD-X). Shorter reaction times were generally found with the MWassisted protocol compared to the thermal procedure.Some of the prepared b-CD-X derivatives have been previously synthesised: 2a [27], 2c [16, 28-30], 2f [31-35], 2g [18].To the best of our knowledge, 2b, 2d, 2e, 2h and 2i are synthesised and characterised for the first time.An excess of liquid amine was reacted with 6-tosyl-b-CD (150:1) in a sealed tube yielding b-CDXs via the MW procedure (30 min, 200 W, 85°C). Microwave reactions were carried out in a CEM Explorer. In the case of 2a aqueous NH 3 solution (28% w/w) was used. Attempts to Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (