Background: One of the commonly utilized method for the conversion of nitriles to amines is the hydrogenation in the presence of a transition metal as catalyst at elevated temperature and pressure.[1] On the other hand, sodium borohydride in combination with various metal salts, such as nickel, cobalt, and aluminum have been used to reduce nitriles.[2-4] Although some of these methods efficiently reduce nitriles but many of them require hard and extended reaction conditions. Methods: The nano-sized La 0.5 Ca 0.5 CoO perovskite material was synthesized and applied to find the advantage of it in the reduction of nitrile-containing compounds. The reaction conditions was initially optimized by monitoring of the mole-ratio of the catalyst, reaction time, temperature of the reaction, the kind of solvent and the amount of the reducing agent. After the optimization, the treatment of various nitrilecontaining compounds with NaBH 4 3 in the presence of catalytic amount of nano-sized La 0.5 Ca CoO 0.5 3 perovskite particles as catalyst in methanol at 40 ºC gave the corresponding secondary amines in good to high yields.

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