Preparation of Amines

Amines can be built up in the laboratory from several different starting functional groups, each requiring its own named reaction: alkyl halides (by ammonolysis, 13.3.1), nitro compounds (by reduction, 13.3.2), alkyl cyanides/nitriles (by reduction, 13.3.3), amides (by reduction, 13.3.4, giving a primary amine with the SAME carbon count, and by Hofmann degradation, 13.3.6, giving instead a primary amine with one carbon FEWER), and phthalimide (via the multi-step Gabriel synthesis, 13.3.5, the one method here restricted to primary amines only). Together these six routes give a genuinely broad toolkit, since a chemist can choose whichever starting material is most conveniently available an …