Single non-noble metal atom doped CN catalysts for chemoselective hydrogenation of 3-nitrostyrene.

Improving the reaction selectivity and activity for challenging substrates such as nitroaromatics bearing two reducible functional groups is important in industry, yet remains a great challenge using traditional metal nanoparticle based catalysts. In this study, single metal atom doped M-CN catalysts were theoretically screened for selective hydrogenation of 3-nitrostyrene to 3-vinylaniline with H as the H-source. Among 20 M-CN catalysts, the non-noble Mn-CN catalyst was found to have excellent reaction selectivity.