Practical Synthesis of SimplePhos Ligands: Further Development of Alkyl‐Substituted Phosphanamines

Herein we disclose a rapid and easy synthetic procedure to access aryl‐ and alkyl‐substituted phosphanamines (SimplePhos ligands). During the synthesis of a library of diverse aryl‐substituted phosphanamine ligands we also found that alkyl‐substituted phosphanamines can be synthesized and handled easily. This was unexpected as a previous report described them as highly air‐sensitive compounds. Subsequently, we created a library of alkyl‐substituted phosphanamines and found some to be highly efficient ligands in copper‐catalyzed reactions such as the Cu‐catalyzed asymmetric conjugate addition and propargylic alkylation reactions. Moreover, our efforts towards the synthesis of SimplePhos ligands led to the development of an easy and practical synthesis of diaryl(chloro)phosphanes, which is also presented in this paper.