Recent Achievements in the Hydrogenation of Nitriles Catalyzed by Transitional Metals

Abstract

Amines are important and valuable intermediates in the pharmaceutical, plastic and agrochemical industry. Hence, there is an increasing interest in developing improved process for the synthesis of amines. The heterogeneous catalytic hydrogenation of nitriles is one of the most frequently applied methods for the synthesis of diverse amines, but the homogeneous catalysis has also received a growing attention from the catalysis community. This mini-review provides an overview of the recent achievements in the selective reduction of nitriles using both homogeneous and heterogeneous transition metal catalysts.