Palladium Supported Aminobenzamide Modified Silica Coated Superparamagnetic Iron Oxide as an applicable Nanocatalyst for Heck Cross-Coupling Reaction

Abstract An applicable palladium-based nanocatalyst was constructed through the immobilization of palladium onto 2-aminobenzamide functionalized silica coated superparamagnetic iron oxide magnetic nanoparticles. The nanocatalyst (named as Pd@ABA@SPIONs@SiO2) was characterized by several characterization methods, including scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), vibrating-sample magnetometry (VSM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), dynamic light scattering (DLS), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), inductively coupled plasma (ICP), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analyses. Microscopy results showed that the nanoparticles are spherical in shape with 20–25 nm size. The size of the nanoparticles was confirmed by the DLS method. The superparamagnetic nature of the catalyst was confirmed by the VSM method. The successful functionalization of SPIONs@SiO2 was confirmed by FT-IR spectroscopy. The presence of palladium in the structure of the nanocatalyst was illustrated by XRD and EDS analysis. Also using XPS technique, the oxidation state of palladium in Pd@ABA@SPIONs@SiO2 was determined zero before and after the catalyst was applied in Mizoroki-Heck reaction. Several aryl halides and alkenes were reacted in the presence of the nanocatalyst and formed the corresponding products in high isolated yields. The nanocatalyst showed very good reusability and did not decrease its activity after 10 sequential runs. Density functional theory (DFT) calculation was performed to provide a mechanism for the reaction and confirmed the role of the palladium catalyst in the reaction function.