A Mild TEMPO-Catalyzed Aerobic Oxidative Conversion of Aldehydes into Nitriles

An efficient method to prepare nitriles from aldehydes using hexamethyldisilazane (HMDS) as the nitrogen source has been developed. The reactions were performed with 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine l-oxyl (TEMPO) as the catalyst, NaNO2 or TBN as the co-catalyst, and molecular oxygen as the terminal oxidant under mild conditions. A variety of aromatic, heteroaromatic, aliphatic and allylic aldehydes could be converted into their corresponding nitriles in good to excellent yields.