Building addressable libraries: spatially isolated, chip-based reductive amination reactions.

A Pd(II) reagent has been generated at preselected sites on an electrochemically addressable chip and used to effect the oxidation of the neighboring alcohols on the polymer coating the chip's surface. The resulting carbonyls were then used to accomplish site-selective reductive amination reactions on the chips. The work demonstrates that the confinement strategy developed for spatially isolated Wacker oxidations to specific sites on the chips is general and can be used for other Pd(II)-based reactions.