Molybdenum-doped carbon nitride as an efficient heterogeneous catalyst for direct amination of nitroarenes with arylboronic acids

Heterogeneous metal-catalyzed chemical conversions with a recyclable catalyst are very ideal and challenging for sustainable organic synthesis. A new bipyridyl-Mo(IV)-carbon nitride (CN-K/Mo-Bpy) was prepared by supporting molybdenum complex on C3N4-K and characterized by FT-IR, XRD, SEM, XPS and ICP-OES. Heterogeneous CN–Mo-Bpy catalyst can be applied to the direct amination of nitroarenes and arylboronic acid, thus constructing various valuable diarylamines in high to excellent yields with a wide substrate scope and good functional group tolerance. It is worth noting that this heterogeneous catalyst has high chemical stability and can be recycled for at least five times without reducing its activity.