Hydrophilic Pd/MgO Nanosystem for the Highly Efficient Aqueous-Phase Catalysis of Suzuki–Miyaura Reactions

• Published in: Industrial & engineering chemistry research Vol. 59; no. 1; pp. 81 - 87
• Main Authors: Chen, Jian, Zhang, Maosheng, Pang, Chong, Xiang, Fuwei, Zhu, Mengjing, Ma, Xiaochen, Chang, Ganggang, Yin, Weiyan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Chemical Society 08.01.2020
• ISSN: 0888-5885; 1520-5045
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.iecr.9b05248

Palladium-catalyzed Suzuki coupling reactions are regarded as one of the most effective methods for making C–C bonds; however, a green synthesis to substitute the use of abundant organic solvents has been a challenging problem. Herein, two commercial hydrophilic MgOs with different sizes were selected to support the highly dispersed Pd nanoparticles (NPs) due to the strong host–guest interactions and good hydrophilicity. When (Pd/MgO)nano was applied to catalyze the Suzuki–Miyaura reaction in aqueous solution, the (Pd/MgO)nano exhibited much better catalytic performance than (Pd/MgO)bulk. Particularly, (Pd/MgO)nano also exhibited significantly higher catalytic performance than the commercial Pd/C catalyst (95 vs 62%) due to its excellent hydrophilicity. Besides, the solvent effects, temperature effects, substrate tolerance, and so forth have been systematically investigated to further demonstrate its catalytic performance. More importantly, (Pd/MgO)nano still retained about 87% of catalytic activity after six successive cycles, indicating its great potential in industrial applications.