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A green and scalable strategy has been developed for the synthesis of lignin-derived Zn single atom/N-codoped porous carbon (LCN@Zn-SAC) containing similar ZnNx sites with carbonic anhydrases. This catalyst exhibits superior activity on the α-alkylation of ketones with alcohols via borrowing hydrogen strategy (TON up to 15 h−1) than most of previously reported works. The dehydrogenation of benzyl alcohol is the rate-determining step based on kinetic experiment results. According to experimental and theoretical calculation results, Zn electron density is inversely proportional to reaction energy barriers, because Zn sites with less positive charge (ZnN4 and ZnN3C) in Zn-SACs display better borrowing hydrogen ability than other Zn sites. Furthermore, this catalyst can be recycled by simple centrifugation, which can be reused at least 8 runs with no obvious lose in activity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of non-noble metal-SAC-catalyzed α-alkylation via borrowing hydrogen strategy.

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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 18 June 2021
Revised: 26 July 2021
Accepted: 01 August 2021
Published: 02 September 2021
Issue date: March 2022

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© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2021

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 30920021120) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 32001266, 21776138, and 22078161) for financial support.

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