Electrochemical selective hydrocarboxylation of acrylamides with carbon dioxide for precise control of α- and β-carboxylation.

The hydrocarboxylation of acrylate with carbon dioxide (CO2) have been achieved through metal-catalysis, photochemistry catalysis or electrochemistry catalysis in recent years. The hydrocarboxylation of acrylamide has rarely been studied so far, because of the electron cloud density of the carbon-carbon double bond in acrylamide molecules is lower than that of acrylates. Herein, we report an electrochemical selective hydrocarboxylation method of acrylamides with CO2. The α-carboxylation and β-carboxylation products can be obtained by adjusting the reaction conditions. The present protocol features mild conditions, good regioselectivity, broad substrare scope and high atom economy. Furthermore, detailed control experiments and DFT calculations results showed that the carboxylation at the α- and β- sites undergo different reaction processes.