A highly active reusable polymer anchored copper catalyst for C-O, C-N and C-S cross coupling reactions

•Furfural functionalized polymer anchored copper catalyst was synthesized and characterized.•This catalyst shows O-arylation of phenols and S-arylation reaction of thiophenols with aryl halides.•This catalyst shows excellent catalytic activity in N-arylation reaction.•Above C-O, C-N and C-S coupling reactions are optimized.•This catalyst can be recycled upto five times.

A new furfural functionalized polymer-amine grafted with copper catalyst has been designed and employed for the N-arylation, O-arylation and S-arylation reactions under an open air condition to afford the corresponding coupled products in good to excellent yields. This solid supported catalyst was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), UV–vis spectroscopy and scanning electron microscope (SEM). The developed catalyst can be facilely recovered and reused five times without significant decrease in activity and selectivity. This result confirms that the polymer anchored complex was not leached during the reaction, suggesting the true heterogeneous nature of the catalyst.

Graphical abstractNew furfural functionalized polymer-amine grafted with copper catalyst has been designed and employed for the N-arylation, amination, O-arylation and S-arylation reactions under an open air condition to afford the corresponding coupled products in good to excellent yields.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload high-quality image (80 K)Download as PowerPoint slide