One-pot oxidant-free dehydrogenation-Knoevenagel tandem reaction catalyzed by a recyclable magnetic base-metal bifunctional catalyst

A new base-metal bifunctional catalyst NH-Pd(0)@MNP was prepared via a facile procedure and fully characterized. The as-prepared catalyst was used as an efficient relay catalyst for the one-pot oxidant-free dehydrogenation-Knoevenagel condensation tandem reaction from benzyl alcohol in H2O under mild conditions and generated benzalmalononitriles with yield up to 96%. Meanwhile, the catalyst could be easily recovered from the reaction system by an external magnetic field, and is reusable with little loss of activity up to 6 runs (<5%).