A mild, copper-catalysed amide deprotection strategy: use of tert-butyl as a protecting group

Mild methods for the deprotection of organic substrates are of fundamental importance in synthetic chemistry. A new room temperature method using a catalytic amount of Cu(OTf)2 is reported. This allows use of the tert-butyl group as an amide protecting group. The methodology is also extended to Boc-deprotection.