An Efficient and Reusable Palladium Catalyst Supported on a Rasta Resin for Suzuki-Miyaura Cross-Couplings

Palladium nanoparticles embedded in mesoporous carbons as efficient, green and reusable catalysts for mild hydrogenations of nitroarenes

The reduction of nitroarenes is the most efficient route for the preparation of aromatic primary amines. These reductions are generally performed in the presence of heterogeneous transition metal catalysts, which are rather efficient but long and tedious to prepare. In addition, they contain very expensive metals that are in most cases difficult to reuse. Therefore, the development of efficient, easily accessible and reusable Pd catalysts obtained rapidly from safe and non-toxic starting materials was implemented in this report. Two bottom-up synthesis methods were used, the first consisted in the impregnation of a micro/mesoporous carbon support with a Pd salt solution, followed by thermal reduction (at 300, 450 or 600 °C) while the second involved a direct synthesis based on the co-assembly and pyrolysis (600 °C) of a mixture of a phenolic precursor, glyoxal, a surfactant and a Pd salt. The obtained composites possess Pd nanoparticles (NPs) of tunable sizes (ranging from 1–2 to 7.0 nm) and homogeneously distributed in the carbon framework (pores/walls). It turned out that they were successfully used for mild and environment-friendly hydrogenations of nitroarenes at room temperature under H₂ (1 atm) in EtOH in the presence of only 5 mequiv. of supported Pd. The determinations of the optimal characteristics of the catalysts constituted a second objective of this study. It was found that the activity of the catalysts was strongly dependent on the Pd NPs sizes, i.e., catalysts bearing small Pd NPs (1.2 nm obtained at 300 °C and 3.4 nm obtained at 450 °C) exhibited an excellent activity, while those containing larger Pd NPs (6.4 nm and 7.0 nm obtained at 600 °C, either by indirect or direct methods) were not active. Moreover, the possibility to reuse the catalysts was shown to be dependent on the surface chemistry of the Pd NPs: the smallest Pd NPs are prone to oxidation by air and their surface was gradually covered by a PdO shell decreasing their activity during reuse. A good compromise between intrinsic catalytic activity (i.e. during first use) and possibility of reuse was found in the catalyst made by impregnation followed by reduction at 450 °C since the hydrogenation could be performed in only 2 h in EtOH or even in water. The catalyst was quantitatively recovered after reaction by filtration, used at least 7 times with no loss of efficiency. Advantageously, almost Pd-free primary aromatic amines were obtained since the Pd leaching was very low (<0.1% of the introduced amount). Compared to numerous reports from the literature, the catalysts described here were both easily accessible from eco-friendly precursors and very active for hydrogenations under mild and “green” reaction conditions.

Size induced activity and reusability of mesoporous carbons containing Pd NPs are demonstrated herein for mild and green hydrogenations of nitroarenes.

Reusable magnetic PdxCoy nanoalloys confined in mesoporous carbons for green Suzuki–Miyaura reactions

(Pd_x–Co_y)@MC were prepared in one-pot via an eco-friendly route and used many times for Suzuki reactions in H₂O or H₂O/EtOH mixture.

A green direct preparation of a magnetic ordered mesoporous carbon catalyst containing Fe–Pd alloys: application to Suzuki–Miyaura reactions in propane-1,2-diol

A mesoporous carbon containing Fe–Pd alloys showed excellent activity for Suzuki–Miyaura couplings using tiny amounts of Pd and afforded Pd-free products after reaction.

Soluble polymer-supported hindered phosphine ligands for palladium-catalyzed aryl amination

Two structurally different heptane soluble polymers – polyisobutylene and poly(4-alkylstyrene) – are shown to be good supports for hindered biaryldicyclohexyl phosphine Pd(0) aryl amination catalysts.

Palladium-loaded Renewable Polymer as a Green Heterogeneous Catalyst for Cross-coupling Reactions under Microwave Irradiation

A new palladium catalyst was prepared by immobilising ligand 2, 2′-dipyridylamine on the backbone of an acidic rosin polymer from gum rosin, on to which palladium(II) was bound via coordination. The catalyst at a low loading of 0.2 mol% was found to be highly effective for Suzuki–Miyaura coupling reactions of aryl halides and arylboronic acids under microwave irradiation in the presence of 1 equiv. of Na2CO3, affording excellent yields of the corresponding biaryls. Moreover, the catalyst exhibited very good recyclability over three cycles.

Reengineering classic organic reactions using polymeric tools

Many of the most widely used reactions in organic synthesis suffer from drawbacks that can hamper their use. For example, the Mitsunobu, Wittig and Appel reactions all result in the formation of a full equivalent of triphenylphosphine oxide, which can be similar in polarity to the desired product, and thus be difficult to remove. Other reactions such as the Suzuki-Miyaura and Mizoroki-Heck reactions require the addition of numerous reagents, ligands and catalysts that can be laborious to separate from the targeted cross-coupled product. This review summarizes our recent work to address these issues by developing polymeric tools designed to simplify product isolation from these transformations.

Rasta resin-triphenylphosphine oxides and their use as recyclable heterogeneous reagent precursors in halogenation reactions

Heterogeneous polymer-supported triphenylphosphine oxides based on the rasta resin architecture have been synthesized, and applied as reagent precursors in a wide range of halogenation reactions. The rasta resin–triphenylphosphine oxides were reacted with either oxalyl chloride or oxalyl bromide to form the corresponding halophosphonium salts, and these in turn were reacted with alcohols, aldehydes, aziridines and epoxides to form halogenated products in high yields after simple purification. The polymer-supported triphenylphosphine oxides formed as a byproduct during these reactions could be recovered and reused numerous times with no appreciable decrease in reactivity.

Multifunctional organic polymeric catalysts and reagents

A series of polystyrenes bearing multiple different functional groups has been synthesized, and these materials have been used as catalysts and reagents in a variety of organic reactions. Polymers functionalized with various combinations of amine, phenol, phosphine, and thiourea groups have been prepared in both non-cross-linked (soluble) and cross-linked (insoluble) formats. Reactions catalyzed by these polymers include Morita–Baylis–Hillman (MBH), alkyne to 1,3-diene isomerization, and decarboxylative Doebner–Knoevenagel reactions. Furthermore, Wittig and tandem Wittig/reduction reactions have been performed using heterogeneous polymeric reagents possessing a combination of amine and phosphine groups.