08 August 2017 11 7K Report

I've been trying using NaBD4/NiCl2·6H2O/Boc2O to reduce nitrile into d2-primary amine.

A pretest using NaBH4 ran smoothly but when NaBD4 was used LC-MS showed that the product is a mixture of di-deuterated and mono-deuterated product (almost 1:1 ) together with minor undeuterated product. 

The solvent is MeOH, also, the NiCl2·6H2O may account for the  H-source.  But the mechanism should involve this H-D exchange with NaBD4 how could I improve this reaction?

PS: The substrates also bears a carboxylate, in this sense reduction by LiAlD4 is not considered.

Thanks!

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update :

Sorry for my rough description above.

The operation is modified from Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, 2009, Vol. 52, No. 16 (see attachment) In Scheme 7. I wish to use isotope products thus NaBD4 is used. However the catalyst(NiCl2·6H2O) and solvent (MeOH) is not deuterated as I presume that only NaBD4 play the role of reductant and the deuterated product should be obtained exclusively.

Now that the result is obtained in a mixture of mono-/di-D-substitued compounds as shown in the picture (see attachment), how can I improve my result?

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