Novel cigarette butts-derived porous carbon-based catalyst for highly efficient Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling reaction

Abstract

Cigarette butts (CB), a major hazardous waste, are discarded improperly into the environment, which poses serious threats to environment and human health. To reduce the pollution and realize the transformation of dangerous waste into high value products, we reported a novel Pd@carbon composite derived from CB as a heterogeneous catalyst for Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling reaction. The cigarette butt-derived carbon was super porous and had high surface area, which effectively improved the dispersion of Pd nanoparticles and stabilized them in porous carbon during multiple catalytic cycles without obvious aggregating or leaching. The Pd@CCB catalyst showed good catalytic activity and selectivity for Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling reactions under mild reaction conditions, which provided high yields (up to 98%) and good stability even after seven cycles. Moreover, the catalytic activity of Pd@CCB is comparable to that of commercial Pd@C and is superior to that of activated-carbon (AC) supported Pd. This work not only solves a knotty environmental problem (discarded cigarette butts) but also provides new insights on valorization route to high-performance carbon nanomaterials for numerous applications, which is available at low cost and in large quantities.