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Triplet Nitrenes Open a New Path to Swap Carbon for Nitrogen in Bicyclic Rings
Key Takeaways
- A new Science paper (Vol. 393, Issue 6818, pp. 1359-1363, September 2026) reports on using triplet nitrenes for carbon-to-nitrogen replacement in complex bicyclic (hetero)aryl azides.
- The work targets skeletal editing, where a single atom in an existing scaffold is swapped rather than building the molecule from scratch.
- Triplet nitrenes are diradical species historically avoided by synthetic chemists in favor of more predictable singlet nitrenes; the paper's framing suggests deliberately exploiting the triplet state.
- Bicyclic and heteroaryl substrates are a demanding test because of ring strain, stereochemistry and multiple possible reaction sites.
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DT Editorial Team··via science.org