Photochemistry and homogeneous acid catalysis: A visible light route to β-amino alcohols

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The β-amino alcohol moiety is commonly present in either natural and labmade bioactive compounds with multifaceted applications, spanning pharmaceutics, material sciences and asymmetric synthesis. Among the different strategies adopted to achieve this target, the aminolysis of epoxides in the presence of either Bronsted or Lewis acids is mainly followed. We present herein a versatile, visible light promoted protocol for the preparation of β-amino alcohols from epoxides, by exploiting the peculiar reactivity of photoactivatable arylazo sulfones as Photo Acid Generators (PAGs). • A visible light-mediated acid catalyzed aminolysis of epoxides. • A simple and easy scalable procedure for the synthesis of β-amino alcohols. • Mild reaction conditions and an environmentally benign solvent (dimethylcarbonate, DMC) are employed.