Azo functionalized polystyrene supported Copper nanoparticles: An economical and highly efficient catalyst for A[formula omitted] and KA[formula omitted] coupling reaction under microwave irradiation

Abstract

The combination of polymeric support and metal nanoparticles were always leading towards better catalytic systems. Herein, we report Cu supported on azo functionalized polystyrene. The synthesized catalyst was characterized by (SEM, HR-TEM, EDX, RAMAN, XPS, and IR). Active Cu species stabilized by azo linkages present in the polymer matrices is responsible for the catalytic activity. We enrolled in the catalyst in A3 (aldehyde, amine, and acetylene) and KA2 (cyclic ketone, amine, acetylene) coupling reaction. Synthesized catalyst performs much better under microwave irradiation as compared to the conventional method. The better activity of the catalyst may be due to the presence of azo linkages which stabilized the copper nanoparticles in polymer matrices. We achieved 98% yield in both the coupling reactions and time ranges between 15–20 min. We synthesized six derivatives of tetra substituted propargylamine and twenty two derivatives of propargylamines by utilizing optimized conditions. Furthermore, the synthesized catalyst and the reaction conditions were environmentally friendly. In the reusability scan, we found that catalyst was reuse more than seven times with a slight loss in its activity.