The R&D Center for Green Chemistry and Catalysis of the Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics (LICP), CAS, has developed one-step synthesis of N-alkylated anilines from nitrobenzenes and alcohols catalyzed by nano-gold catalyst. The yields to N-alkylated anilines were ~90% under relatively mild conditions. It is expected that the reaction can be applied in the clean and simple synthesis of N-alkylated anilines.

Aromatic amines are extensively found in biologically active natural products, pharmaceuticals, dyes and ligands for transition-metal-catalyzed reactions. In recent years, many methods have been developed for the preparation of aromatic amines. However, the existing approaches either cause pollution to the environment or use organic ligand and additional base as cocatalyst which makes the catalyst system complicated and impractical. 

The findings have been published in Chem. Commun. (Chem. Commun., 2011, 47, 6476–6478).

Chem. Commun. Paper

Nano-gold catalyzed one-pot coupling of nitrobenzenes and alcohols to N-substituted amines (Image by SHI Feng et al.)