Copper malonamide complexes and their use in azide-alkyne cycloaddition reactions

We report a rare example of the malonamide functionality being used as a ligand in copper catalysis. We have ligated a homologous series of these O,O-chelating architectures to copper, investigated their structure and exploited them in azide–alkyne cycloaddition reactions for the step-growth synthesis of oligo(triazoles) and in the synthesis of small organic azoles.