Electrochemical Ammonium Cation‐Assisted Hydropyridylation of Ketone‐Activated Alkenes: Experimental and Computational Mechanistic Studies
Jianjing Yang, Jing Ma, Kelu Yan, Laijin Tian, Bingwen Li, Jiangwei Wen
Abstract
Abstract This work describes an electrochemical ammonium cation enabled hydropyridylation of ketone‐activated alkenes under metal‐ and exogenous reductant free conditions giving access to β‐pyridyl ketones, through dual proton‐coupled electron transfer and radical cross‐coupling. It features a broad substrate scope and allows a gram‐scale synthesis. Ammonium chloride plays various roles in this transformation such as the hydrogen donor, the protonation reagent, and electrolyte. In particular, various experiments and density functional theory (DFT) calculation results show the mechanism of dual proton‐coupled electron transfer followed by radical cross‐coupling is the preferred pathway. magnified image