“…Catalysts tested include species which have been previously tried in the nitro-Mannich reaction such as carbonates, bicarbonate and hydroxide inorganic salts (entries 2–6) ( Wang et al, 2008 ; Zhang, Liu & Liu, 2011 ; García-Muñoz et al, 2014 ), silica (entry 7) ( Mahasneh, 2006 ), basic alumina (entry 8) ( Baricordi et al, 2004 ), and KF on alumina (entry 16) ( Ballini et al, 2014 ), as well as species which have been documented to function efficiently in similar Mannich-type reactions such as Amberlite IRA-400 Cl resin (entry 10) used to catalyse the aza-Friedel Crafts reaction ( Harichandran, Amalraj & Shanmugam, 2016 ), montmorillonite K-10 (entry 12) used to synthesise numerous Mannich bases ( Arunkumar, Subramani & Ravichandran, 2010 ), PPA-silica (entry 13) used in double Mannich condensation reactions ( Vekariya, Prajapati & Patel, 2016 ) or similar C-C bond forming reactions such as Amberlyst A-21 (entry 9) used to catalyse the nitroaldol reaction ( Ballini, Bosica & Forconi, 1996 ). Since modest results were observed with different acidic and basic strengths, a number of bifunctional catalysts were tested.…”