Abstract

Aziridines are the saturated three-membered cyclic amines that constitute an important group of synthetic intermediates. These could act as a precursor for diverse organic compounds owing to the reactivity due to the ring strain associated with them. The outstanding property of aziridines is their high reactivity towards various nucleophilic and electrophilic reagents to acquire more stable ring-opened or ring-expanded amines that could be obtained from the release of strain energy intrinsic in a small ring. As such, aziridines could be used in the synthesis of 4-7 membered heterocycles of biological and industrial significance, such as azetidines, imidazoles, thiazoles, pyrazines, pyrimidines, benzothiazines, benzodiazepines, etc. Earlier synthesis of aziridines was considered a laborious task due to their instability. However, various synthetic approaches leading to the formation of aziridines are now available in the literature. Recently, green, cost-effective and approaches based on simpler work-up for these reactions have attracted researcher's attention. This review article deals with synthetic routes of aziridines and aziridine applications in organic synthesis.

Keywords: Heterocyclic compounds, organic synthesis, aziridines, alkenes, imines, intramolecular substitution reactions, nitrogen-containing heterocycles, applications, aziridine ring-opening.

Graphical Abstract