Electrosynthesis of benzyl--butylamine nickel-catalyzed oxidation of benzyl alcohol.

The development of sustainable synthetic methods for converting alcohols to amines is of great interest due to their widespread use in pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals. In this work, we present an electrochemical approach by using green electrons for the selective oxidation of benzyl alcohol to benzaldehyde using a NiOOH catalyst, followed by its reductive amination to form benzyl--butylamine. The number of Ni monolayer equivalents on the catalyst was found to significantly influence selectivity, with 2 monolayers achieving up to 90% faradaic efficiency (FE) for benzaldehyde in NaOH, while 10 monolayers performed best in a -butylamine solution (pH 11), yielding 100% FE for benzaldehyde.