Silica supported palladium–NiXantphos complex is an efficient and high turnover heterogeneous catalyst for N-alkylation of amines and α-alkylation of ketones using alcohols under neat conditions at 120–140 °C following hydrogen borrowing strategy.
PdCl2 in the presence of dppe or Xantphos(t-Bu) as the ligand is found to be an efficient catalyst for the N-alkylation of various primary and cyclic secondary amines using primary alcohols at 90–130 °C under neat conditions. Interestingly, good to excellent yields were achieved when more challenging secondary alcohols were used as alkylating agents at 130–150 °C. The reaction could be easily scaled