Water enables transimination between hindered ketimines and β-aminoalcohols and selective protection of a vicinal diamine backbone

Water mediates synthesis of novel hindered Schiff bases via transmination protocol. The feature of the procedure is that it allows both tuning of steric and electronic factors of the substituents and mono-imination of vicinal diamines, which potentially facilitates one-pot approach to unsymmetrical metal ligands.

Water mediates access to hindered ketimine ligands incorporating one or two benzylidene moieties and 1,2-diaminocyclohexane.