Nitrogen heterocycles are of great medicinal importance, and the construction of nitrogen heterocyclic scaffolds has been one of the focuses in synthetic organic chemistry. Recently, the strategy of transition metal-catalyzed sp3 C–H activation and intramolecular C–N coupling to construct nitrogen heterocyclic scaffolds has been well developed. Palladium, copper, silver, nickel, cobalt, ruthenium and rhodium catalysis were successfully used for the construction of nitrogen heterocyclic scaffolds, aziridines, azetidines, pyrrolidines, pyrrolidine-2,5-diones, indolines, isoindolines, isoindolinones, tetrahydropyridines, oxazolidinones, oxazinanones, β-lactams, γ-lactams etc., which have been synthesized by the sp3 C–H activation strategy. Here, we summarize the progress of transition metal-catalyzed sp3 C–H activation/intramolecular C–N bond formation, and introduce both the reaction development and mechanisms in numerous synthetically useful intramolecular sp3 C–H catalytic aminations/amidations.
