Photocatalytic Oxo-Amination of Aryl Cyclopropanes through an Unusual SN2-Like Ring-Opening Pathway: Won >99% ee

One-pot oxo-amination of unactivated cyclopropanes with safe, green dioxygen as an oxidant and low-cost amines as nitrogen sources has generated interest since this can directly result in uniform β-located difunctional units. Formation of the three-electron cation radical followed by the nucleophilic attack of amines to open the strained ring of cyclopropanes catalyzed by classic noble-complex photocatalysts was a promising strategy. However, this ring-opening pathway could not maintain the entire second-order nucleophilic substitution (SN2) conversion, which generally led to unsatisfactory enantioselectivity (enantiomeric excess (ee) value ∼60%). Here, we demonstrate that for such a one-step oxo-amination of cyclopropanes with benign dioxygen and pyrazoles, a highly uniform inversion of configuration could be first accomplished through a TiO2 photocatalyst. This strategy features low-cost, semiheterogeneous photocatalysis and environmentally friendly reaction conditions, without using any sacrificial reagent or additive. Importantly, our protocol not only provides a relatively broad substrate scope tolerant to a certain range of substituted cyclopropanes and pyrazoles, resulting in various β-amino ketone products (∼50 examples) with excellent conversions and yields, but also retains excellent enantioselectivity (ee value ∼99%). A concerted SN2 ring opening raised from an oxetane cation intermediate rather than a conventional three-electron cation radical prior to attaching to dioxygen was proposed.