One-pot photo-reductive N-alkylation of aniline and nitroarene derivatives with primary alcohols over Au-TiO2

We report the photo-catalytic N-alkylation of aniline by Au-TiO2. We successfully alkylate aniline with several primary alcohols. The combined selectivities of mono- and di-alkylated products were always in excess of 70% and dependent on the alkylating alcohol used. A one-pot reaction from nitrobenzene was found to be possible with several substrates. Preliminary experiments showed that this approach could be adopted for the production of lactams using terminal amino-alcohols.