Alloying Engineering of Defective Molybdenum Sulfide Basal Planes for Enhanced Borrowing Hydrogen Activity in the Thioetherification of Alcohols.

The borrowing hydrogen thioetherification of alcohols over heterogeneous catalysts has emerged as an attractive and practical synthetic strategy to prepare thioethers from the perspective of green and sustainable chemistry. Developing efficient catalysts is the key to improve this carbon-sulfur (C-S) bond formation process. Herein, a novel catalyst, namely {Mo2.

Molecularly Engineering Defective Basal Planes in Molybdenum Sulfide for the Direct Synthesis of Benzimidazoles by Reductive Coupling of Dinitroarenes with Aldehydes.

Developing more sustainable catalytic processes for preparing N-heterocyclic compounds in a less costly, compact, and greener manner from cheap and readily available reagents is highly desirable in modern synthetic chemistry. Herein, we report a straightforward synthesis of benzimidazoles by reductive coupling of -dinitroarenes with aldehydes in the presence of molecular hydrogen. An innovative molecular cluster-based synthetic strategy that employs MoS complexes as precursors have been used to engineer a sulfur-deficient molybdenum disulfide (MoS)-type material displaying structural defects on both the naturally occurring edge positions and along the typically inactive basal planes.