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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