Amines can be made by heating a haloalkane with excess ammonia.
You will get a mixture of primary, secondary and tertiary amines, and quarternary ammonium salts, as more than one hydrogen is likely to be substituted.
You can seperate the products using fractional distillation in order to make one particular amine.
This is a nucleophilic substitution reaction. The general mechanism is:
1. NH3 attacks the delta positive carbon on the haloalkane and donates its lone pair of electrons, forming a bond with the carbon.
2. As carbon can only have four bonds, the addition of ammonia causes the C-X bond to break, releasing a negatively charged halide ion and leaving an alkylammonium salt.
3. A second ammonia molecule then donates its lone pair of electrons to one of the hydrogens attached to the nitrogen.
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