Amines

Amines are an alkaline organic compound. Their reactions and properties are very similar to ammonia. This is because, like ammonia, they can form hydrogen bonds (in the -NH_x group), act as weak bases, and can form complexes with copper (II) ions.

Functional Group and Classification

Classification of amines is a little different to that of alcohols and haloalkanes. We focus on the number of carbons bound to the nitrogen atom within the functional group for amines.

Nomenclature

There are three accepted ways to name amines. All of them will be used here, so you can choose which one you prefer. However, you are advised to avoid the "alkyl amine" nomenclature in NCEA answers. You will see why when you look at the last example, and 2-amino butane.

The first two of these names for the secondary amine is generated by attaching the "amino" name to the longest carbon chain, then treating the other carbon chain as a "side chain". We use N- to show where that "side chain" is attached (as we use numbers to indicate which carbon atom side chains are attached to in other organic compounds).

The last name is simply generated by treating both carbon chains as "side chains". We name them in alphabetical order.

The second name could also be N,N-dimethyl 1-propanamine.

Now, let's have a look at a really tricky one, and this might show why we avoid one of these naming systems in NCEA...

So, in NCEA we will name our amines as aminoXXXane or XXXanamine, using numbers to show which carbon atom the -NH₂ group is bound to, and "N-" for any extra carbon chains bound to the nitrogen atom.