Photochemical single-step synthesis of β-amino acid derivatives from alkenes and (hetero)arenes.

β-Amino acids are frequently found as important components in numerous biologically active molecules, drugs and natural products. In particular, they are broadly utilized in the construction of bioactive peptides and peptidomimetics, thanks to their increased metabolic stability. Despite the number of methodologies established for the preparation of β-amino acid derivatives, the majority of these methods require metal-mediated multistep manipulations of prefunctionalized substrates. Here we disclose a metal-free, energy-transfer enabled highly regioselective intermolecular aminocarboxylation reaction for the single-step installation of both amine and ester functionalities into alkenes or (hetero)arenes. A bifunctional oxime oxalate ester was developed to simultaneously generate C-centred ester and N-centred iminyl radicals. This mild method features a remarkably broad substrate scope (up to 140 examples) and excellent tolerance of sensitive functional groups, and substrates that range from the simplest ethylene to complex (hetero)arenes can participate in the reaction, thus offering a general and practical access to β-amino acid derivatives.