Catalytic dehydrogenation of amines to imines and the in-situ reduction of sulfoxides into sulfides

The catalytic acceptorless dehydrogenation of primary amines into imines and H2 represents one of the most important organic transformations, and the in-situ utilization of the generated H2 for chemical reduction reactions has never been reported in previous research. Herein, nitrogen-doped carbon supported nickel catalysts (abbreviated as Ni/NC-T, where T represents the pyrolysis temperature) were facilely prepared by the simple pyrolysis process, and the Ni/NC-600 catalyst demonstrated excellent catalytic performance towards the tandem reaction of the dehydrogenation of primary amines into imines and the subsequent hydrodeoxygenation of sulfoxides into sulfides using the in-situ released H2, affording high to quantitative yields. The developed methods demonstrated some advantages such as the use of heterogeneous non-noble metal catalysts with low cost and high stability, and the in-situ utilization of generated H2 with high atom efficiency.