Heterogeneous Catalytic Reduction of Tertiary Amides with Hydrosilanes Using Unsupported Nanoporous Gold Catalyst

We have demonstrated that the unsupported nanoporous gold (AuNPore) was a green and highly efficient heterogeneous catalyst for the reduction of amides to amines using hydrosilanes as reductants. A variety of tertiary amides with a broad functional groups were reduced to the corresponding tertiary amines in the presence of 2 mol% of AuNPore and PheMe(2)SiH or (Me2SiH)(2)O under mild conditions. AuNPore catalyst was recovered by simple filtration and used for twelve times without any loss of catalytic activity. The AuNPore/hydrosilane system was also successfully applied to the hydrosilative reduction of sulfoxides and N-oxides.