From vicinal azido alcohols to Boc-amino alcohols or oxazolidinones, with trimethylphosphine and Boc2O or CO2

A practical solution to the problem of converting directly 1,2-azido alcohols to Boc-amino alcohols, without recourse to catalytic hydrogenation, involves the use of Me3P/Boc2O in THF (or CH2Cl2) and aqueous NaOH at rt (90–98% yields). The same azido alcohols can be converted in one-pot to the corresponding oxazolidinones with Boc2O/DMAP/Me3P or even better with CO2 and Me3P under basic catalysis (91–96% yields).