Development Of A Practical Synthetic Method For N-Tert-Butoxycarbonyl Alpha-Ketimino Esters

Despite the potential synthetic utility of N-Boc alpha-ketimino esters as prochiral ketimines to give chiral alpha-tertiary amines, there has been no general method to access these molecules in a practical fashion. We report herein a procedure for the one-step synthesis of N-Boc alpha-ketimino esters starting from the corresponding alpha-keto esters.