Copper-Assisted Direct Nitration of Cyclic Ketones with Ceric Ammonium Nitrate for the Synthesis of Tertiary α-Nitro-α-substituted Scaffolds.

An efficient and direct Cu-assisted nitrating approach to create synthetically valuable and challenging tertiary α-nitro-α-substituted moieties has been developed using ceric ammonium nitrate as a nitrating reagent, oxidant, and Lewis acid. Notably, the commonly used clinical drug ketamine was smoothly synthesized in four steps.