Hydrophilic role of deep eutectic solvents for clean synthesis of biphenyls over a magnetically separable Pd-catalyzed Suzuki-Miyaura coupling reaction

Abstract

The development of an efficient and sustainable catalytic system for the preparation of biphenyls through the Suzuki-Miyaura coupling reaction is still a great challenge to green chemistry. Encouraging the prevailing challenge, in the present work, a heterogeneous Pd catalyst was synthesized through a green method and used for the production of biphenyls in deep eutectic solvents (DESs) as green reaction media. In order to prepare the catalyst, magnetite-graphene oxide nanocomposite was modified with cellulose via the click reaction and applied as support for Pd nanoparticles. Cellulose acted as both reducing and stabilizing agent for Pd nanoparticles and eliminated the requirement of a reducing agent. The prepared catalyst was characterized by different methods such as FT-IR, EDX, EDX-mapping, XPS, SEM, TEM, XRD, VSM, and ICP-OES analyses. Catalytic properties of the obtained catalyst was explored in the coupling reaction of aryl halides with aryl boronic acids in different hydrophilic and hydrophobic DESs. The presence of cellulose with hydrophilic character on the structure of catalyst offered well dispersion of the catalyst in hydrophilic DESs, which led to enhancement of its catalytic activity. Among various hydrophilic DESs, the DES composed of dimethylammonium chloride and glycerol was verified as the most effective solvent for the preparation of biphenyls. The catalyst was compatible with a variety of substrates, with which all the Suzuki coupling products were achieved in high to excellent yields. Thanks to the low solubility of catalyst and DES in organic solvents, the separated aqueous phase containing both of the catalyst and DES could be readily recovered by evaporating water and reused up to five successive runs with a stable activity. This simple and new separation strategy provided a clean and highly efficient synthetic methodology for the synthesis of various biphenyls. Moreover, hot filtration test efficiently confirmed that the catalyst is heterogeneous and completely stable under reaction conditions.