Surprising and Highly Efficient Use of Methylmagnesium Chloride as a Non-Nucleophilic Base in the Deprotonation and Alkylation of sp<sup>3</sup>
Centres Adjacent to Nitriles
We describe alkylation of 1° and 2° nitriles (and MeCN) using methylmagnesiumchloride (MeMgCl) for deprotonation in the presence of a catalytic amount of an amine with excellent conversions and selective mono‐ or dialkylation when there are two hydrogens on the sp3 centre adjacent to the nitrile. With primary nitriles we can sequentially introduce two different α‐alkyl groups and with acetonitrile