Applied Organometallic Chemistry, EarlyView.
An secondary amine/Pd(0) bifunctional catalyst was synthesized and applied as an efficient and recyclable relay catalyst for oxidant‐ and base‐free dehydrogenation of a series of benzyl alcohols in H2O and dehydrogenation‐Knoevenagel tandem reaction.
A new base‐metal bifunctional catalyst NH‐Pd(0)@MNP was prepared via a facile procedure and fully characterized. The as‐prepared catalyst was used as an efficient relay catalyst for the one‐pot oxidant‐free dehydrogenation‐Knoevenagel condensation tandem reaction from benzyl alcohol in H2O under mild conditions and generated benzalmalononitriles with yield up to 96%. Meanwhile, the catalyst could be easily recovered from the reaction system by an external magnetic field, and is reusable with little loss of activity up to 6 runs (<5%).