Expedient organocatalytic Aza-Morita–Baylis–Hillman reaction through ball-milling

A ball-milling enabled tertiary amine catalyzed aza-Morita–Baylis–Hillman reaction is reported. The reaction process does not require solvent, has significantly shorter reaction times than previous methods and is reported on a range of imines and acrylate Michael acceptors across than 26 examples. A 12-fold scaled-up example is also reported as well as experimental comparisons to solution-based experiments and neat-stirred reactions