Asymmetric Synthesis of Chiral Primary Amines by Ruthenium-Catalyzed Direct Reductive Amination of Alkyl Aryl Ketones with Ammonium Salts and Molecular H<sub>2</sub>
amination of simple ketones. The strategy makes use of ammonium acetate as the amine source and H2 as the reductant and is a user-friendly and operatively simple access to industrially relevant primary amines. Excellent enantiocontrol (>90% ee for most cases) was achieved with a wide range of alkylarylketones. The practicability of this methodology has been highlighted by scalable synthesis of key intermediates