By ligand, TEMPO, and base screening, we developed a mild and green one-pot imine synthesis from alcohols and aminesvia a low-loading palladium-catalyzed tandem aerobic alcohol oxidation–dehydrative condensation reaction that can be readily carried out in open air at room temperature.

The construction of heterocycles from MCPs affords more opportunities for the quick synthesis of elaborately substituted products. This review aims to summarize the novel organic reactions of MCPs to produce heterocycles published in recent years, which have provided specific and powerful tools for organic synthesis.

By employing aerobic oxidation to aldehydes as a more effective alcohol activation strategy, ligand-free copper catalysts were found to be superior catalysts than other metals in aerobic dehydrative β-alkylation of secondary alcohols and α-alkylation of methyl ketones using alcohols as the green alkylating reagents. Based on our mechanistic studies and also supported by the literature, we deduce that the newly-proposed relay race process rather than the conventional borrowing hydrogen-type mechanisms should be the most possible and a more rational mechanism for the aerobic C-alkylation reactions.