iChEM researcher, Prof. Haichao Xu’s group achieved the first electrocatalytic method that employs ferrocene (Fc), a cheap organometallic reagent, as the redox catalyst to produce amidyl radicals from N-aryl amides. Their work was published on Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. (2016, 54, 10.1002/anie.201510418) with a topic “Electrocatalytic Generation of Amidyl Radicals for Olefin Hydroamidation: Use of Solvent Effects to Enable Anilide Oxidation” and was listed as Very Important Paper (VIP).

Oxidative generation of synthetically important amidyl radicals from N_H amides is an appealing and yet challenging task. Previous methods require a stoichiometric amount of a strong oxidant and/or a costly noble-metal catalyst. We report herein the first electrocatalytic method that employs ferrocene (Fc), a cheap organometallic reagent, as the redox catalyst to produce amidyl radicals from N-aryl amides. Based on this radical-generating method, an efficient intramolecular olefin hydroamidation reaction has been developed.

This work was supported by Prof. Xin Lu’s research group for theoretical calculation, and funded by NSFC (project#：21402164), Xiamen University President foundation.

Paper link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201510418/abstract