Click amidations, esterifications and one-pot reactions catalyzed by Cu salts and multimetal-organic frameworks (M-MOFs)

Amides and esters are prevalent chemicals in Nature, industry and academic laboratories. Thus, it is not surprising that a plethora of synthetic methods for these compounds has been developed along the years. However, these methods are not 100% atom economical and generally require harsh reagents or reaction conditions. Here we show a 'spring-loaded', 100% atom-efficient amidation and esterification protocol which consists in the ring opening of cyclopropenones with amines or alcohols. Some alkyl amines react spontaneously at room temperature in a variety of solvents and reaction conditions, including water at different pHs, while other alkyl amines, aromatic amines and alcohols react in the presence of catalytic amounts of simple Cu2+ salts or solids. A modular reactivity pattern (alkyl amines >> alkyl alcohols >> phenols >> aromatic amines) enables to design orthogonal and one-pot reactions on well-defined catalytic Multimetal-Organic Frameworks (M-MOFs, M= Cu, Ni, Pd), to easily functionalize the resulting cinnamides and cinnamic esters to more complex molecules. The strong resemblance of the amidation and esterification reaction conditions here reported with the copper- catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC) allows to define this fast, clean and flexible protocol as a click reaction.