ABSTRACT
Nitrenes of the general formula R-N are reactive intermediates containing a monovalent nitrogen atom with a sextet of electrons in its outer shell. A variety of names such as azenes [1], imine radicals [2], imene [3], and imido intermediates (imidogens) [4] have all been used by various authors, however the term ‘‘nitrene’’ is generally accepted in the literature. The R group may be an alkyl, aryl, acyl, a hetaryl, sulfonyl, phosphazyl, or an amino group. Nitrenes were first mentioned as reactive intermediates more than 100 years ago by Tiemann [5]. Nitrenes are isoelectronic to carbenes and this relationship heated up the investigation of nitrenes themselves and their addition to olefins in parallel with carbenes in the 1960s. As a result there are a number of reviews dealing with the generation of and chemistry of nitrenes [3a,4,6]. However, given all this study, only carbenes have been produced as stable entities, this development has yet to be reported for nitrenes.
