A water-soluble palladium-salen catalyst modified by pyridinium salt showing higher reactivity and recoverability for Heck coupling reaction

• A water-soluble palladium-salen catalyst modified by pyridinium salt was synthesized.
• This catalyst can efficiently catalyze the Heck reactions.
• This catalyst is not only recyclable, but also show higher reactivity compared with the un-modified one.

A novel and water-soluble palladium-salen catalyst modified by pyridinium salt was synthesized and characterized by NMR, HRMS, FT-IR, ICP, elemental analysis and UV–vis spectroscopy. The catalyst can efficiently catalyze the Heck reaction between aryl halides and olefins. The reaction using 0.5 mol% catalyst can achieve 98.3% conversion with 99% selectivity. The catalytic activity of catalyst modified by pyridinium salt is higher than that of un-modified one. Furthermore, the catalyst can be easily separated from reaction system by water wash and subsequently recycled for six runs without significant loss of activity and selectivity.

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