Amine Functional Group

If you would like to learn about the amine functional groups with some questions go here instead of continuing with this page.

Amines are organic compounds (hydrocarbons) which contain the element nitrogen. Everyone knows ammonia a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula NH₃. The structure of ammonia is shown in several different forms below,

Notice there are three bonds to the nitrogen in this compound and a lone-pair of electrons on the nitrogen. We can only see the lone-pair in the right most Electron-dot structure. It is present in the other two structures, it just is not shown.

Amines can be thought of as derivatives of ammonia. Amines contain at least one carbon containing substituent bonded to the nitrogen in place of one of the hydrogen atoms. So if we replace one hydrogen atom with the simplest carbon containing branching group we would have the following compound, CH₃NH₂. what does this compound look like?

This compound is called methyl amine and is the simplest amine. It is no longer ammonia because we have replaced one of the hydrogens with a carbon containing substituent.

Another way to look at these compounds is as an alkane with a nitrogen atom replacing one of the hydrogen atoms.

The important thing to remember is just as all organic compounds have carbon atoms with four bonds, all amine compounds will have nitrogen with three bonds. In methyl amine the nitrogen has three bonds; two to hydrogen atoms and one to a carbon atom.

The next simple amine is dimethylamine. Just as the name suggeests this amine has two methyl groups bonded to the nitrogen.

This compound has a nitrogen atom with three bonds; two to carbon atoms and one to a hydrogen atom.

We could continue with trimethylamine, or ethylamine as additional examples of amines. But lets look at some more disgusting examples of amines!! Have you ever smelled putrescine or cadaverine? These amines are found in urine and bad breath. How would you know these are amines, well not from the names, but by finding the functional group given the structure. Here are the structures of these two very smelly compounds.

Do you see there are actually two amine groups in putrescine and in cadaverine.

So we can recognize amine functional group by locating a nitrogen atom with three bonds one of which is to a carbon atom. We can use the notation R- as a carbon containing substituent. So the amine functional group is RNH₂, or R₂NH, or R₃N.

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