Alcohol amination catalyzed by copper powder as a self-supported catalyst.

Catalytic alcohol amination is a sustainable reaction for N-alkyl amine synthesis. In the past research, homogeneous and supported copper catalysts have been extensively studied and nice resutls were obtained. In this work, we'd like to show that copper powder can behave as an active catalyst for the alcohol amination, and its catalytic performance was better than the oxides supported nano-copper catalysts. Catalyst characterizations suggested that the copper powder can be considered as the self-supported nano-copper, i.e., nano-copper supported on copper particles. These results might promote the study of unsupported transition metal powders in sustainable catalytic reactions.