Recent Achievements in the Rhodium‐Catalyzed Concise Construction of Medium N‐Heterocycles, Azepines and Azocines

Abstract

Abstract Medium N‐heterocycles, azepines and azocines, serve as important skeletons that occurred widely in natural products, however, due to the lack of efficient synthetic methodologies, their application potential in biologically active molecules, pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals remained to be explored. In this context, rhodium catalysis in this field featured good reactivity and functional group tolerance, with readily available starting materials, and enabled rapid access to the azepines and azocines. Delightfully, great achievements in the concise construction of these 7 and 8‐membered N‐heterocycles under rhodium catalysis have been made, which mainly included cycloisomerization of unsaturated C−X bonds (which might also combine the ring‐opening strategy on strained rings), metal carbenoid or nitrene insertion involved transformations and direct C−H activation reactions. Considering the great performance of rhodium catalyst in the synthesis of azepines and azocines, herein, we summarized the recent results in this field, and wish to give further insight and inspired more encouraging methodologies and new drug discovery based on these 7 and 8‐membered N‐heterocycles. magnified image