Complicated and expensive organic ligands are normally essential in fine chemical synthesis at preparative or industrial levels. The synthesis of fine chemicals by using heterogeneous catalyst systems without additive organic ligand is highly desirable but severely limited due to their poor generality and rigorous reaction conditions.

The R&D Center for Green Chemistry and Catalysis of the Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics (LICP), CAS, has successfully prepared a simple and general Ag/Mo hybrid material (Ag₆Mo₁₀O₃₃) catalyst for the alkylation of amines, carboxamides, sulfonamides, and aromatic ketones with alcohols. The yields for the reactions are normally ～90？% under reaction conditions as mild as conventional homogeneous systems without additional organic ligand. The catalytic process shows promise for the efficient and economic synthesis of amine, carboxamide, sulfonamide, and ketone derivatives because of the simplicity of the system and ease of operation. This result should be an inspiration for designing practically valuable catalysts for fine chemical synthesis.

The work has received support from the by the National Natural Science Foundation of China . The detailed report has been published in Chem. Eur. J. (Chem. Eur. J. 2011, 17, 1021 – 1028).

Chem. Eur. J. Paper