Treatment of epoxides with bis(trimethylsilyl)‐selenide under strictly controlled conditions allows to isolate β‐hydroxy selenols which evidence an unexpected stability, taking into account their known propensity to afford diselenides. Also thiiranes and aziridines lead to functionalized selenols bearing a thiol and a N‐Ts‐ or N‐Boc‐protected amino moiety on β‐position. These selenols were stable enough
Tetraselenotungstate 1 has been shown to be a versatile selenating reagent and has been used successfully for the regio- and stereospecific ring opening of aziridines to afford a number of interesting beta-amino diselenides in good yields in a single step under mild reaction conditions without using any Lewis acid. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.