Aziridines are useful synthetic building blocks, widely employed for the preparation of various nitrogen-containing derivatives. As the current methods require the use of prefunctionalized amines, the development of a synthetic strategy toward aziridines that can establish the union of alkenes and amines would be of great synthetic value. Herein, we report an electrochemical approach, which realizes this concept via an oxidative coupling between alkenes and primary alkylamines. The reaction is carried out in an electrochemical flow reactor leading to short reaction/residence times (5 min), high yields, and broad scope. At the cathode, hydrogen is generated, which can be used in a second reactor to reduce the aziridine, yielding the corresponding hydroaminated product. Mechanistic investigations and DFT calculations revealed that the alkene is first anodically oxidized and subsequently reacted with the amine coupling partner.

氮丙啶是有用的合成构件，广泛用于制备各种含氮衍生物。由于当前的方法需要使用预官能化的胺，因此开发能够建立烯烃和胺的结合的氮丙啶的合成策略将具有很大的合成价值。在这里，我们报告了一种电化学方法，该方法通过烯烃与伯烷基胺之间的氧化偶联实现了这一概念。该反应在电化学流动反应器中进行，从而缩短了反应/停留时间（5分钟），产率高且适用范围广。在阴极处产生氢，该氢可用于第二反应器中以还原氮丙啶，得到相应的氢化胺化产物。