Artificial photosynthetic systems store solar energy in chemical fuels via CO2 reduction or renewable hydrogen from water splitting. But only relatively moderate CO2-reducing solar-to-fuel efficiency (ηSTF

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A scalable protocol of direct N-mono/dialkyl/fluoroalkylation of primary/secondary amines has been constructed with various carboxylic acids as coupling agents under the catalysis of a simple air-tolerant inorganic salt, K 3 PO 4. Advantageous features include 100 examples, 10 drugs and druglike amines, fluorinated complex tertiary amines, gram-scale synthesis and isotope-labelling amine, thus demonstrating the potential applicability in industry of this methodology. The involvement of relatively less reactive silicon-hydride compared with the traditional reactive metal-hydride or boronhydride species required to reduce the amide intermediates presumably contributes to the remarkable functional group compatibility.

One-step conversion of low-purity polyolefins to value-added products without pretreatments represents a great opportunity for chemical recycling of waste plastics. However, additives, contaminants, and heteroatom-linking polymers tend to be incompatible with catalysts that break down polyolefins. Here, we disclose a reusable, noble metal–free and impurity-tolerant bifunctional catalyst, MoS x -Hbeta, for hydroconversion of polyolefins into branched liquid alkanes under mild conditions. The catalyst works for a wide scope of polyolefins, including different kinds of high–molecular weight polyolefins, polyolefins mixed with various heteroatom-linking polymers, contaminated polyolefins, and postconsumer polyolefins with/without cleaning under 250°C and 20 to 30 bar H 2 in 6 to 12 hours. A 96% yield of small alkanes was successfully achieved even at a temperature as low as 180°C. These results demonstrate the great potentials of hydroconversion in practical use of waste plastics as a largely untapped carbon feedstock.

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