Aerobic alcohol ammoxidation catalyzed by copper(I)/amino acid: a scalable protocol to nitriles

A facile, practical and scalable catalyst system for alcohols ammoxidation into nitriles is developed using amino acid as ligand, oxygen as terminal oxidant and copper iodide(CuI) as catalyst. The catalyst system shows excellent functional groups compatibility for a wide range of testing substrates, even the substrates bearing oxidation-sensitive groups such as MeS—, alkenyl and —NH 2 can also work well. In addition, the protocol is readily scaled up to more than 20 g and the product can be obtained just through filtration or distillation without conventional column chromatography.