Production of novel palladium nanocatalyst stabilized with sustainable chitosan/cellulose composite and its catalytic performance in Suzuki-Miyaura coupling reactions

In this study, we designed a new palladium nanocatalyst on chitosan/cellulose composite for the first time to increase the use of sustainable polysaccharides, which are cheap, non-toxic, environmental friendly, abundant in nature, and can be used as support materials for metallic nanoparticles. Physicochemical characterization of fabricated palladium nanocatalyst was illuminated with FT-IR, TG/DTG, SEM/EDAX, XRD, and ICP-OES analyses. Pd nanoparticles were found to be almost spherically structured, and the average particle size was 26-30 nm. Then catalytic performance of the designed nanocatalyst was investigated in the synthesis of a series of biphenyl compounds via the Suzuki-Miyaura reaction by using the green method which is conducted in a very short-time, under low temperature, and without the presence of any toxic chemical solvents (e.g., 5 min treatment in microwave oven at 400W at 50 °C). As a result of the tests, palladium nanocatalyst showed excellent catalytic performance with high conversion yields for a wide range of substrates and with a very low catalyst loading for the Suzuki reactions. Sustainability performance of palladium nanocatalyst was also studied, and it is found that the catalyst was able to be recycled for eight successive runs.