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Transition metal-free NaOH-catalyzed hydration of nitriles to primary amides in NH3·H2O–DMSO mixture

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Abstract

In this paper, we reported an efficient protocol for hydration of aryl(hetero) and alkyl nitriles toward primary amides with 0.1 equiv. NaOH in NH3·H2O–DMSO under mild conditions. Various substituted nitriles are smoothly converted to the corresponding amides with good to excellent isolated yields. Gram-scale reactions were also performed to produce the desired products in high yields. In addition, the excessive hydrolysis of the nitrile to form the corresponding carboxylic acid was also achieved with increasing the amount of NaOH and prolonging the reaction time.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the NSFC (no. 21868032) and the construct program of applied characteristic discipline in Hunan University of Science and Engineering for the financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering/The Key Laboratory for Green Processing of Chemical Engineering of Xinjiang Bingtuan, Shihezi University, Shihezi, 832003, China

    Nan Wang, Peilong Ma, Jianwei Xie & Jie Zhang

  2. College of Chemistry and Bioengineering, Hunan University of Science and Engineering, Yongzhou, 425199, China

    Jianwei Xie

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  1. Nan Wang
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  2. Peilong Ma
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Correspondence to Jianwei Xie.

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Wang, N., Ma, P., Xie, J. et al. Transition metal-free NaOH-catalyzed hydration of nitriles to primary amides in NH3·H2O–DMSO mixture. Mol Divers 25, 1131–1136 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11030-020-10058-6

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