Nanocrystalline Titania-Supported Palladium(0) Nanoparticles for Suzuki-Miyaura Cross-Coupling of Aryl and Heteroaryl Halides

Advances in Matrix-Supported Palladium Nanocatalysts for Water Treatment

Advanced catalysts are crucial for a wide range of chemical, pharmaceutical, energy, and environmental applications. They can reduce energy barriers and increase reaction rates for desirable transformations, making many critical large-scale processes feasible, eco-friendly, energy-efficient, and affordable. Advances in nanotechnology have ushered in a new era for heterogeneous catalysis. Nanoscale catalytic materials are known to surpass their conventional macro-sized counterparts in performance and precision, owing it to their ultra-high surface activities and unique size-dependent quantum properties. In water treatment, nanocatalysts can offer significant promise for novel and ecofriendly pollutant degradation technologies that can be tailored for customer-specific needs. In particular, nano-palladium catalysts have shown promise in degrading larger molecules, making them attractive for mitigating emerging contaminants. However, the applicability of nanomaterials, including nanocatalysts, in practical deployable and ecofriendly devices, is severely limited due to their easy proliferation into the service environment, which raises concerns of toxicity, material retrieval, reusability, and related cost and safety issues. To overcome this limitation, matrix-supported hybrid nanostructures, where nanocatalysts are integrated with other solids for stability and durability, can be employed. The interaction between the support and nanocatalysts becomes important in these materials and needs to be well investigated to better understand their physical, chemical, and catalytic behavior. This review paper presents an overview of recent studies on matrix-supported Pd-nanocatalysts and highlights some of the novel emerging concepts. The focus is on suitable approaches to integrate nanocatalysts in water treatment applications to mitigate emerging contaminants including halogenated molecules. The state-of-the-art supports for palladium nanocatalysts that can be deployed in water treatment systems are reviewed. In addition, research opportunities are emphasized to design robust, reusable, and ecofriendly nanocatalyst architecture.

Catalysis of Alloys: Classification, Principles, and Design for a Variety of Materials and Reactions

Alloying has long been used as a promising methodology to improve the catalytic performance of metallic materials. In recent years, the field of alloy catalysis has made remarkable progress with the emergence of a variety of novel alloy materials and their functions. Therefore, a comprehensive disciplinary framework for catalytic chemistry of alloys that provides a cross-sectional understanding of the broad research field is in high demand. In this review, we provide a comprehensive classification of various alloy materials based on metallurgy, thermodynamics, and inorganic chemistry and summarize the roles of alloying in catalysis and its principles with a brief introduction of the historical background of this research field. Furthermore, we explain how each type of alloy can be used as a catalyst material and how to design a functional catalyst for the target reaction by introducing representative case studies. This review includes two approaches, namely, from materials and reactions, to provide a better understanding of the catalytic chemistry of alloys. Our review offers a perspective on this research field and can be used encyclopedically according to the readers' individual interests.

Green Synthesis of Oxide-Supported Pd Nanocatalysts by Laser Methods for Room-Temperature Carbon-Carbon Cross-Coupling Reactions

This work reports the design and development of a new class of highly active Pd nanocatalysts supported on substoichiometric oxides. These novel catalysts are generated by green laser synthesis methods to generate high-surface-area substoichiometric oxide nanoparticles followed by photoreduction in aqueous solutions to deposit highly active Pd nanocatalysts within the surface defects of the oxides. The laser methods eliminate the use of toxic chemicals, including hazardous solvents and chemical reducing agents, and allow efficient reduction of the Pd ions in aqueous solutions aided by the photogenerated electrons from the semiconductor support. The Pd catalysts incorporated within these oxides exhibit high activity for carbon-carbon bond-forming reactions. The Pd/TiO₂ catalyst with 0.3 mol % Pd achieves 100% conversion in the reaction between bromobenzene and benzeneboronic acid to the biphenyl product within 240 minutes at room temperature without any external heating. With a catalyst loading of 0.3 mol % Pd in the microwave-assisted reaction between bromobenzene and benzeneboronic acid at 60 °C, 92 and 83% conversions to the biphenyl product are achieved within 5 min of reaction time using the Pd/TiO₂ and Pd/ZnO catalysts, respectively. The results demonstrate a remarkable catalytic activity of the substoichiometric oxide-supported Pd catalysts with turnover frequencies (TOF, h^-1) of 24 000, 10 000, and 3200 achieved under mirowave-assisted reactions at 60 °C for the 0.03 mol% Pd of the Pd/TiO₂, Pd/ZnO, and Pd/ZrO₂ catalysts, respectively. The high activity and good reusability of these nanocatalysts are attributed to the optimum catalyst-support interaction between the small Pd nanoparticles and the surface defects of the substoichiometric oxide support prepared by the laser vaporization-controlled condensation method.

Towards high-performance heterogeneous palladium nanoparticle catalysts for sustainable liquid-phase reactions

A walk-through of nanoparticle–reactant/product, nanoparticle–support and support–reactant/product interaction effects on the catalytic performance of heterogeneous palladium catalysts in liquid-phase reactions.

Development of Titanium Dioxide-Supported Pd Catalysts for Ligand-Free Suzuki–Miyaura Coupling of Aryl Chlorides

The catalyst activities of various heterogeneous palladium catalysts supported by anatase-, rutile- and brookite-type titanium oxide for ligand-free Suzuki–Miyaura cross-coupling reactions of aryl chlorides were evaluated. Palladium acetate [Pd(OAc)2], supported on anatase-type titanium oxide (TiO2) via acetonitrile solution impregnation process without reduction [Pd/TiO2 (anatase-type)], demonstrated the highest catalyst activity in comparison to those of other titanium oxide (rutile- or brookite-type) supported Pd(OAc)2 without reduction and reduced Pd/TiO2 (anatase-type) [Pd(red)/TiO2 (anatase-type)]. Various aryl chloride and bromide derivatives were smoothly coupled with arylboronic acids including heteroarylboronic acids in the presence of 5–10 mol% Pd/TiO2 (anatase-type) without the addition of any ligands. Although the fresh Pd/TiO2 (anatase-type) catalyst was surprisingly comprised of ca. 1:2 mixture of palladium(II) and palladium(0) species according to X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), in spite of no reduction process, significant further increment of palladium(0) species was observed during the Suzuki–Miyaura coupling reaction, and Pd/TiO2 (anatase-type) was converted into a catalyst, which contained palladium(0) species as the main component [ca. 1:5 mixture of palladium(II) and palladium(0) species]. Therefore, the reduction via the electron donation process to the palladium(II) species may have occurred during the reaction on anatase-type titanium oxide.

Immobilized palladium nanoparticles within polymers as active catalysts for Suzuki–Miyaura reaction

A highly active and reusable catalyst Pd@PNP was developed for Suzuki–Miyaura reaction of aryl chlorides and bromides with aryl boronic acids, and the corresponding biphenyl compounds were obtained in good to excellent yields.

A family of low molecular-weight, organic catalysts for reductive C-C bond formation

Hydrazines form a new family of low molecular-weight reducing agents for diazonium salts. Using only small amounts of hydrazine catalyst, the coupling of diazonium salts to a variety of reactive partners has been achieved, without the requirement for either metal adjuvants or irradiation with visible or ultraviolet light. The generality of the concept proposed herein as well as its advantages in the preparative scale is outlined and discussed.