Palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction of azides with isocyanides

Chem Commun (Camb). 2015 Nov 25;51(91):16312-5. doi: 10.1039/c5cc05981j.

Abstract

An efficient palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction of azides with isocyanides is developed, providing a general synthetic route to unsymmetric carbodiimides with excellent yields. This method shows a broad substrate scope, including not only aryl azides, but also unactivated benzyl and alkyl azides. Furthermore, from readily available substrates, Pd-catalyzed coupling with a tandem amine insertion cascade to obtain unsymmetric trisubstituted guanidines has been achieved in a one-pot fashion.