Palladium nanoparticles supported on graphene and reduced graphene oxide as efficient recyclable catalyst for the Suzuki–Miyaura reaction of potassium aryltrifluoroborates

• Palladium nanoparticles supported on graphene efficiently catalyze Suzuki reaction.
• Catalyst can be easily recycled, especially using microwave irradiation.
• Coupling reaction can be scaled up to multi-gram scale.
• Catalyst stability is higher under microwave irradiation than conventional heating.
• Nanoparticles dissolution/re-deposition mechanism is involved.

Palladium nanoparticles supported on graphene platelets have been efficiently used as catalyst in the Suzuki–Miyaura coupling between aryl bromides and potassium aryltrifluoroborates using 0.1 mol% of Pd and potassium carbonate as base in MeOH/H2O as solvent at 80 °C. The reaction can be performed using conventional and microwave heating showing the catalyst high reusability, particularly with microwaves, where lower aggregation of Pd nanoparticles has been observed. A dissolution/re-deposition catalytic mechanism is proposed, based on the fact that palladium leaching to the solution is detected under microwave irradiation.

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