The composites obtained herein are marked as Cu@SiO2-X, where X is the entry number (Table ). A significant quantity of carbon was also found in the samples, and we supposed that the carboneous component could make influence on the catalytic performance of the samples (it was previously supposed that the carboneous materials could have catalytic activity in organic reactions ]). The resulting composites were studied by XRD, SEM, TEM, RAMAN and EDX; the catalytic properties of the composites in the reaction of ethyl 4-oxocyclohexanecarboxylate with propargylamine leading to ethyl 5,6,7,8-tetrahydroquinoline-6-carboxylate (Scheme 1) were tested. This reaction was chosen as a model because of the simple spectral characterization of the reaction mixtures, the non-volatility of the starting ketone and the product, and the importance of the product as the starting compound for fine organic synthesis.