Two new routes have been developed to generate manganese-chelated amides from imineand carbon monoxide building blocks. The reaction of (CO)
5MnR (R = CH
3, Ph) with (
p-tolyl)(R
1)=NR
2 (R
1 = H,
tBu; R
2 = alkyl, H) results in the generation of the cyclometalatedimine complexes (CO)
4Mn[
2-4-CH
3-2-(C(R
1)=NR
2)-C
6H
3] in 50-84% isolated yield. However,when the reaction of (
p-tolyl)(H)C=NCH
3 with (CO)
5MnCH
3 is performed in the presence ofAlCl
3, the product of sequential carbon monoxide and imine insertion is generated in 35%yield: (CO)
4Mn[
2-C(H)(
p-tolyl)N(CH
3)COCH
3]. The addition of PPh
3 to the latter complexresults in replacement of a carbonyl ligand and formation of the isolable
fac-(CO)
3(PPh
3)Mn[
2-C(H)(
p-tolyl)N(CH
3)COCH
3]. In an alternative route to metal-bound amides, theoxidative addition of the N-acyl iminium salt (
p-tolyl(H)C=N(CH
3)COPh
+Cl
- to (CO)
5Mn
-Na
+has been found to lead to the generation of the product of subsequent CO insertion, (CO)
4Mn[
2-COC(H)(
p-tolyl)N(CH
3)COPh]. The latter represents the first example of a acyl-boundtransition-metal-chelated
-amino acid complex and has been characterized by X-raycrystallography. Preliminary reactivity studies demonstrate that (CO)
4Mn[
2-COC(H)(
p-tolyl)N(CH
3)COPh] reacts with PPh
3 to generate the unchelated
cis-(CO)
4(PPh
3)Mn[COC(H)(
p-tolyl)N(CH
3)COPh], while reaction with NaBH
4 leads to the liberation of the amide(
p-tolyl)CH
2N(CH
3)COPh, rather than the amino acid residue.