Abstract

Background: A nucleophilic substitution between hydroxylactam and diarylphosphine oxide was developed for synthesizing α-aminophosphine oxide.

Methods: Without a catalyst, hydroxylactams reacted with diarylphosphine oxides smoothly to furnish a series of isoindolo-β-carboline-derived phosphine oxide.

Result: Isoindolo-β-carboline-derived phosphine oxides were obtained in 70-99% yields under mild reaction conditions. Notably, only water was a by-product. The mechanism of the atom-economic synthetic process was also discussed.

Conclusion: The synthetic process is simple, efficiency, atom-economic and with great practical worth.

Keywords: Catalyst-free, hydrophosphonylation, hydroxylactam, N-acylimium ion, nucleophilic substitution, phosphine oxide.

Graphical Abstract