A rare earth hydride supported ruthenium catalyst for the hydrogenation of N-heterocycles: boosting the activity via a new hydrogen transfer path and controlling the stereoselectivity

Hydrogenation of N-heterocycles is of great significance for their wide range of applications such as building blocks in drug and agrochemical syntheses and liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHCs). Pursuing a better hydrogenation performance and stereoselectivity, we successfully developed a rare earth hydride supported ruthenium catalyst Ru/YH(3) for the hydrogenation of N-heterocycles, especially N-ethylcarbazole (NEC), the most promising LOHC. Full hydrogenation of NEC on Ru/YH(3) can be achieved at 363 K and 1 MPa hydrogen pressure, which is currently the lowest compared to previous reported catalysts. Furthermore, Ru/YH(3) shows the highest turnover number, namely the highest catalytic activity among the existing catalysts for hydrogenation of NEC. Most importantly, Ru/YH(3) shows remarkable stereoselectivity for all-cis products, which is very favorable for the subsequent dehydrogenation. The excellent performance of Ru/YH(3) originates from the new hydrogen transfer path from H(2) to NEC via YH(3). Ru/LaH(3) and Ru/GdH(3) also reveal good activity for hydrogenation of NEC and Ru/YH(3) also possesses good activity for hydrogenation of 2-methylindole, indicating that the use of rare earth hydride supported catalysts is a highly effective strategy for developing better hydrogenation catalysts for N-heterocycles.