Preparation of palladium nanoparticles supported on conjugated microporous polymers with excellent catalytic performance

Abstract

Conjugated microporous polymers (CMPs) are a class of microporous organic polymers that consist with most conjugated π-systems. In this work, CMPs with high surface area of 1082 m2 g− 1 and pore volume were synthesised. Using H2PdCl4 as metal precursor, NaBH4 aqueous solution as reducing agent and the as-synthesised CMPs as catalyst supports, Pd@CMP-1 catalyst was successfully prepared. Hydrogenation reaction of 4-Nitrotoluene was employed as a probe reaction to investigate the catalytic performance of Pd@CMP-1 catalyst. The palladium nanoparticles can be well dispersed and loaded on the CMPs to afford an efficient catalyst by immersion and reduction method. Also, the synthesised catalyst possessed high activity and selectivity. Moreover, different percentages of palladium and pressure nearly have little influences on the reactions and the catalyst had certain cycle performance after five times by simple centrifugation, suggesting that the Pd@CMP-1 catalyst had certain chemical stability. The high catalytic performance has been attributed to the special structure of CMPs. This work might provide useful guidance for rational design and preparation of novel CMPs–metal nanoparticles catalysts for various catalytic reactions by loading different metal nanoparticles on various CMPs.