Some Reactions of Azides

Azide Ion: Structure, Properties, and Substitution Reactions

Table of Contents

1. The Azide Ion Is A Great Nucleophile
2. Organic Azides As “Masked” Amines
3. Exploding On The Launchpad
4. Nucleophilic Acyl Substitution With Azide Salts: Acyl Azides
5. Rearrangement of Acyl Azides: The Curtius Rearrangement
6. More Examples of Azide Nucleophiles: Epoxide Opening  And Conjugate Addition
7. Notes
8. (Advanced) References and Further Reading

1. The Azide Ion Is A Great Nucleophile In S_N2 Reactions

The azide ion (N₃^– ) is one of those chemical entities that just plain looks weird. 

• Three nitrogens in a row? check
• Two negative charges and a positive charge, for a net charge of –1 ? check
• Stable? check (as long as it’s treated gently). 

As it turns out, the azide ion can extremely useful for forming C-N bonds in nucleophilic substitution reactions.

The azide ion is the conjugate base of hydrazoic acid, HN₃. Despite being only weakly basic (the pK_a of HN₃ is only 4.6) N₃ is an extremely good nucleophile – according to one measure, more nucleophilic than any amine (see post: Nucleophilicity of amines).   It’s not hard to rationalize why this might be when you stop to think about it.  With four nucleophilic lone pairs confined to a very small volume, the likelihood of a collision with an electrophile that results in a reaction is much higher than it would be for an amine with bulky alkyl groups, to take just one example.

You can think of  N₃^–  as a lean, mean, nitrogen-tipped missile that delivers its payload onto carbon quickly, efficiently, and without significant side reactions.

In S_N2 reactions, primary and secondary alkyl halides and sulfonates are readily displaced by N₃^– ,  resulting in alkyl azides:

The usual procedure is to use an azide salt such as NaN₃ or KN₃ with the appropriate alkyl halide in a polar aprotic solvent such as acetonitrile (CH₃CN) or dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO).

The organic azide products are reasonably stable,  even if they look a little weird. Some have even found use as pharmaceuticals (e.g. AZT, below right) or as useful probes for studying chemical biology. [Note 1].

For our purposes the most useful property of organic azides is that they serve as “masked” amines.

2. Organic Azides as “Masked Amines”

Note the resonance form above with a nitrogen-nitrogen triple bond. If treated with a reducing agent, such as LiAlH₄ or even catalytic hydrogenation (Pd/C , H₂) organic azides can be reduced to primary amines, liberating N₂ in the process.

This makes for a very useful route to primary amines from alkyl halides!

We’ve previously explored the Gabriel synthesis as a route to primary amines [see post: The Gabriel Synthesis], but this route is superior because the azide can be reduced to the amine under gentle conditions (e.g. hydrogenation). None of that high-temperature cleavage of the phthalimide with hydrazine to worry about.

We also saw that making primary amines through direct treatment of alkyl halides with NH₃ often doesn’t result in the desired product, because of amines have a Cookie-Monster-like tendency to react multiple times with alkyl halides: since the amine products tend to be more nucleophilic than the reactants, it’s hard to get amines to stop at munching just one alkyl halide. [see post: Alkylation of Amines]

[Note 2 – primary amine synthesis “do’s and don’ts” graphic]

3. Exploding On The Launchpad

If N₃ is a “nitrogen-tipped missile”, as we commented above, it’s worth recalling what happens when a missile isn’t handled with care: it’s essentially a bomb.

NaN₃ and KN₃ are white powders that can be stored indefinitely at room temperature and scooped out at the bench without any trouble.

But when heated or subjected to shock – all bets are off. The same goes for exposure of these azide salts to acid, which forms potentially explosive HN₃.

And NaN₃ and KN₃ are the nice azides! If mixed with metal salts of lead, mercury, cadmium, zinc, or silver, even more explosive azide compounds can result. These metal azides are contact explosives, some of which are so sensitive that they will detonate if someone farts twenty feet down the hall.  Some crazy chemists even make these things on purpose, but we will not be travelling anywhere near the blast radius of that topic on this blog anytime, ever.

NaN₃ and KN₃ should be used at reasonably dilute concentrations, behind a blast shield on preparative scale, and incidentally never used with CH₂Cl₂ solvent, which can result in highly explosive diazidomethane.

Now, there are times when a sudden blast of nitrogen gas is useful – and potentially life-saving.  You may have already spent a portion of your day in close proximity to sodium azide without even realizing it. That’s because NaN₃ is one of several propellants that finds use in airbags; once triggered by an accelerometer, detonation of NaN₃ expels N₂ gas at over 200 mph, inflating the bag in 1/25 of a second. [Note 3]

Yay for azide salts!

via GIPHY

(But don’t be this guy):

via GIPHY

Bottom line: S_N2 reactions between alkyl halides or sulfonates with azides are probably the single best way to synthesize primary amines from alkyl halides. It certainly beats the Gabriel synthesis.

4. Nucleophilic Acyl Substitution With Azide Salts Makes Acyl Azides

The S_N2 reaction isn’t the only type of substitution reaction we’ve explored. There’s also nucleophilic acyl substitution. A carbonyl attached to a good leaving group (such as an acid chloride or anhydride) will undergo substitution when an appropriate nucleophile is added.

In the first step of the mechanism, the nucleophile (Nu) attacks the carbonyl carbon, forming C-Nu and breaking C-O (pi). This gives rise to a tetrahedral intermediate. In the second step, the C-O pi bond is re-formed, and the carbon-(leaving group) bond is broken, resulting in the nucleophilic acyl substitution product.

Here is an example of a nucleophilic acyl substitution reaction between an acid chloride and the N₃ ion to give an acyl azide:

5. Rearrangement of Acyl Azides: The Curtius  Rearrangement

The most common use for acyl azides is that upon heating, they rearrange to give isocyanates in a reaction known as the Curtius rearrangement.  [see post: The Hofmann and Curtius Rearrangements]

• If the Curtius is performed in the presence of an alcohol such as methanol, a carbamate is formed.
• If water is added instead, an unstable carbamic acid is briefly formed, which then loses carbon dioxide to give a primary amine.

Why might this be useful? Here’s one way.

There are a lot of methods for making aromatic carboxylic acids, but not so many great ways of forming C-N bonds on aromatic rings. Say you have a benzoic acid (such as p-methylbenzoic acid) but need to form a (protected) aromatic amine.  The Curtius protocol represents a nice way of forming a new C-N bond on the ring without having to resort to nitration + reduction.

(In this way it’s somewhat analogous to an nitrogen equivalent of the Baeyer-Villiger oxidation. )

6. More Examples Of Azide Nucleophiles: Epoxide Opening  And Conjugate Addition

Two more applications of the azide ion as a nucleophile include the opening epoxides (in what is essentially an S_N2 process – note the inversion of configuration) and also conjugate addition on alpha,beta unsaturated ketones:

The resulting alkyl azides can then be reduced to primary amines using the methods covered above.

Notes

Note 1.Azide-Alkyne Cycloadditions, a.k.a. “Click” chemistry

An interesting and useful application of organic azides that hasn’t yet made it into introductory organic chemistry textbooks (but likely will in the near future) is a process technically called the “copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition“, but more commonly just called the “alkyne-azide click reaction”.

When a terminal alkyne is treated with a copper catalyst in the presence of an organic azide, a cycloaddition rapidly results, leading to the formation of a 1,2,3-triazole.

We won’t go deep into the details, but this ring-forming reaction involves 6 pi electrons and is a cousin of the Diels-Alder reaction (nitpckers will rightly note that the copper-catalyzed version isn’t technically a concerted process, but the non-catalyzed version is)

The reaction is notable for a few reasons:

• the reactive partners (terminal alkyne and organic azide) are relatively inert in the absence of a catalyst under most conditions.
• once copper is added, reaction occurs extremely rapidly under mild conditions and in a variety of solvents (including water).
• it’s extremely selective under these conditions,the alkyne and azide partners react only with each other, irreversibly.
• the product, a triazole ring, is aromatic and stable

It’s been called a “click” reaction by one of its originators, Barry Sharpless, because it’s one of the closest things chemists have to a reaction that is like the smooth “clicking together” of two complimentary lego blocks.

What has made this reaction particularly useful of late is that azide and alkyne partners can be installed in molecules of biological interest, and “clicked” together when desired.

For instance:

• Putting an acetylene at the 5′ position of a sugar and an azide at the 3′ position has been used to make “clicked” DNA, where the triazole replaces the organophosphate. [link]
• Incredibly, one group has made “clicked” DNA, put it into human cells, and managed to get it transcribed by messenger RNA. [link]
• azide-containing AZT (above) works by gumming up the transcription machinery.  Some clever folks found a way to apply the azide-alkyne click reaction toward rapid genome sequencing, a technique known as ClickSeq. [a very readable account here, courtesy of In The Pipeline]

,Note 2. Primary amine synthesis “Do’s and Don’ts” :

Note 3. Takata used sodium azide in the early 1990’s, and then moved to tetrazole and then ammonium nitrate.

From “Sixty Million Car Bombs: Inside Takata’s Air Bag Crisis“.

Ammonium nitrate was about one-tenth the price of tetrazole, according to Upham, who also reviewed industry patents. But ammonium nitrate had a critical flaw that he says led other air bag makers to give up on it: Ammonium nitrate has five phases of varying density that make it hard to keep stable over time. A propellant made with ammonium nitrate would swell and shrink with temperature changes, and eventually the tablet would break down into powder. Water and humidity would speed the process. Powder burns more quickly than a tablet, so an air bag whose propellant had crumbled would be likely to deploy too aggressively. The controlled explosion would be just an explosion. “Everybody went down a certain road, and only Takata went down another road,” says Jochen Siebert, who’s followed the air bag industry since the 1990s and is now managing director of JSC Automotive Consulting. “If you read the conference papers from back then, you can actually see that people said, ‘No, you shouldn’t. It’s dangerous.’ ”

Shrapnel from the faulty airbags has killed 13 people worldwide, and injured more than 100.

On June 25, 2017, facing liabilities of over $11 billion dollars, Takata filed for bankruptcy.

(Advanced) References and Further Reading

Azides are useful in organic synthesis, and a highlight of azide chemistry is given in the references below.

1. Nucleophilic reactivity of the azide ion in various solvents
   Thanh Binh Phan, Herbert Mayr
   Phys. Org. Chem. 2006, 19 (11), 706-713
   DOI: 10.1002/poc.1063
   Prof. Herbert Mayr (LMU, Munich, Germany) has spent his career contributing to fundamental physical organic chemistry by quantifying electrophilicity and nucleophilicity, and developing scales for comparing the reactivity of various nucleophiles and electrophiles.
2. The SN2 displacements at 2-norbornyl brosylates
   Klaus Banert and Wolfgang Kirmse
   Journal of the American Chemical Society 1982, 104 (13), 3766-3767
   DOI: 1021/ja00377a057
3. An Improved Synthesis of Azidothymidine
   I. Balagopala, A. P. Ollapally, & H. J. Lee
   Nucleosides, Nucleotides & Nucleic Acids 1996, 4, 899-906
   DOI: 10.1080/07328319608002136
   Azides can be used as nucleophiles in S_N2 reactions. Ref. #3 shows the use of azide ion in the synthesis of AZT (azidothymidine). The conversion of 1 to 5 via 3 in ref. #3 uses the Mitsunobu Reaction, which allows displacement of an -OH group with a nucleophile with inversion of configuration.
4. Reduction of Organic Azides to Primary Amines with Lithium Aluminum Hydride
   H. Boyer
   Journal of the American Chemical Society 1951, 73 (12), 5865-5866
   DOI: 10.1021/ja01156a507
   The reduction of organic azides to primary amines is a convenient method for the synthesis of primary amines, which are otherwise difficult to synthesize selectively by standard methods.
5. The explosive sensitivity of the metal azides to impact
   P. G. Fox
   J. Solid State Chem. 1970, 2 (4), 491-502
   DOI: 10.1016/0022-4596(70)90043-5
   An investigation of the shock sensitivity of NaN₃, TlN₃, and Pb(N₃)₂.
6. The Curtius Reaction
   Smith, P. A. S. React. 1946, 3, 336
   DOI: 10.1002/0471264180.or003.09
   An old but comprehensive review of the Curtius reaction, which includes the history of the discovery of this rearrangement, substrate scope, limitations, comparison to other similar reactions, and experimental procedures.
7. Synthetic methods and reactions. 121. Zinc iodide catalyzed preparation of aroyl azides from aroyl chlorides and trimethylsilyl azide
   K. Surya Prakash, Pradeep S. Iyer, Massoud Arvanaghi, and George A. Olah
   The Journal of Organic Chemistry 1983 48 (19), 3358-3359
   DOI: 10.1021/jo00167a051b
   A convenient procedure for preparing aromatic aryl azides from Nobel Laureate Prof. George A. Olah. These can then be used for Curtius rearrangements.

Epoxide opening and conjugate addition:

8. CYCLOHEXENE IMINE (7-AZA-BICYCLO[4.1.0]HEPTANE)
   Iain D. G. Watson, Nicholas Afagh and Andrei K. Yudin
   Org. Synth. 2010, 87, 161-169
   DOI: 10.15227/orgsyn.087.0161
   This is a particularly useful procedure, as it is a Staudinger reaction for converting epoxides to NH-aziridines (the nitrogen analog of epoxides). The synthesis can be tricky, but a lot of detail has been provided here so that this can be reproduced, as fitting a procedure in Organic Syntheses.
9. Amine-Catalyzed Addition of Azide Ion to α,β-Unsaturated Carbonyl Compounds
   David J. Guerin, Thomas E. Horstmann, and Scott J. Miller
   Organic Letters 1999,1 (7), 1107-1109
   DOI: 10.1021/ol9909076
   This paper is interesting as it represents an early form or organocatalysis and likely proceeds through an imine or iminium ion intermediate. Unfortunately the term is not used anywhere in the paper – these authors could have beaten Prof. MacMillan to the punch!
10. Click Chemistry: Diverse Chemical Function from a Few Good Reactions
    Hartmuth C. Kolb Dr. M. G. Finn Prof. K. Barry Sharpless Prof.
    Angew Chem. Int. Ed. 2001, 40 (11), 2004-2021
    DOI: 10.1002/1521-3773(20010601)40:11<2004::AID-ANIE2004>3.0.CO;2-5
    The Cu-catalyzed cycloaddition of azides with alkynes has been dubbed a ‘click’ reaction by Nobel Laureate Prof. K. Barry Sharpless (The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA) due to its simplicity, high yields, fast kinetics, and compatibility to a broad range of conditions and substrates. Cu-free reactions are also possible if strained alkynes are used (e.g. cyclooctynes).