The purely aqueous-phase reduction of a wide range of nitro compounds to the corresponding amines has been carried out with NaBH4 in the presence of inexpensive Cu nanoparticles as catalyst. The reactions were taken place in water (80 °C) within 4–15 min to give amines in high to excellent yields.

In this paper the successful application of DABCO both as base and as ligand for efficient coupling reactions of aryl iodides and bromides with 2-hydroxybenzaldehydes in the presence of catalytic amounts of PdCl2 in water as solvent was introduced.