Phan Thanh Son Nam was born in 1977. He graduated with a First Class BE degree in chemical engineering from the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, VNU-HCM, in 1999. In 2001, he joined professor Peter Styring’s research group at Sheffield University, United Kingdom, for his PhD. Next, he moved to the United States and took up a postdoctoral position in the laboratory of Professor Christopher W. Jones at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was awarded a lectureship at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering, HCMUT, in 2006, promoted to associate professor in 2006, and full professor in 2014. He and his co-workers have published more than 80 SCI/SCIE papers. His research interests focus on application of metal-organic frameworks and nano materials as catalysts for organic synthesis.
Work
Giao H. Dang, Thinh T. Dang, Dung T. Le, Thanh Truong, Nam T. S. Phan, 2014. Propargylamine synthesis via sequential methylation and C-H functionalization of N-methylanilines and terminal alkynes under metal-organic-framework Cu2(BDC)2(DABCO) catalysis. Journal of Catalysis, Vol. 319, 258–264.
In this work, we present the direct C-C coupling reaction via methylation and C-H functionalization of N-methylaniline and terminal alkynes to produce propargylamines under Cu2(BDC)2(DABCO) metal-organic framework catalysis. Propargylamines offer a wide range of applications in pharmaceutical, agrochemical, and functional materials. Organic transformations via C-H bond activation have advantages of shorter and more efficient synthetic schemes. Interestingly, tert-butyl hydroperoxide was proposed to serve as the methylating reagent in the coupling reaction, and this transformation of N-methylaniline was not previously reported. Moreover, the Cu2(BPDC)2(BPY) was recovered and reused several times without a significant degradation in catalytic activity.