Facile C-N bond cleavage of primary aliphatic amines by (salen)ruthenium(VI) nitrido complexes.

We report the first example of oxidative cleavage of the strong C-N bonds of primary amines by a ruthenium(VI) nitrido complex. The driving force for this very fast C-N cleavage reaction comes from the formation of stable NN after the initial coupling of the amine N and the nitrido ligand.