Yttrium-catalysed dehydrocoupling of alanes with amines.

We report [Y{N(SiMe3)2}3] as a precatalyst for the dehydrocoupling of sterically demanding amines with β-diketiminate stabilised aluminium dihydrides. While simple fluorinated anilines readily undergo Al-H/N-H dehydrocoupling under thermal conditions, catalytic methods are required to achieve reasonable rates of reaction for ortho-substituted anilines or hindered aliphatic amines.