Nickel ion-containing DABCO based ionic liquid: An efficient catalyst for the convenient chemoselective reduction of nitroarenes, N-acetylation of arylamines, and one-pot reductive acetylation of nitroarenes

The present paper describes convenient, green, and efficient approaches for the chemoselective reduction of nitroarenes, N-acetylation of arylamines, and one-pot reductive acetylation of nitroarenes in the presence of a new nickel ion-containing DABCO based ionic liquid, formulated as [C4(DABCO)2].NiCl4. The prepared catalyst was examined using FT-IR, FESEM, XRD, EDS, ICP-OES, TGA, DRS and TEM analyses. The reported protocols are accompanied with several advantages including the introduction of a novel nontoxic ionic liquid catalyst, green reaction conditions, chemoselectivity, short reaction times and high yields of the products. Significantly, the used Lewis acidic catalyst could be successfully recycled for at least six times without the considerable lose in its catalytic efficiency.