Sublimation-Induced Sulfur Vacancies in MoS2 Catalyst for One-Pot Synthesis of Secondary Amines

MoS2 catalysts with abundant S and Mo defects have been developed for the one-pot reductive amination of nitro compounds with aldehydes to synthesize secondary amines. The combination of multiple structural characterizations demonstrates that the density of S vacancies can be tuned by changing the thermal sublimation temperature. The experimental results and DFT calculations demonstrate that S vacancies on the surface of MoS2 are the active sites for the hydrogenation of the intermediate imines to the final products secondary amines.