A highly efficient polymer-anchored palladium(II) complex catalyst for hydrogenation, Heck cross-coupling and cyanation reactions

BACKGROUND: Precise architectures of steric and electronic properties of palladium species play a crucial role in designing highly functionalized catalyst systems responsible for target organic transformations. Pd catalysts supported on polymer materials have been employed extensively as catalysts not only for hydrogenation but also for coupling reactions in the production of fine chemicals. RESULTS: A new polymer-anchored Pd(II) complex has been synthesized and characterized. The catalyst shows high catalytic activity in the hydrogenation of styrene oxide, Heck cross-coupling and cyanation reactions of aryl halides. The effect of various reaction parameters were investigated to optimize reaction conditions. The catalytic system shows good activity in the hydrogenation of styrene oxide (conversion 98%) with a selectivity to 2-phenylethanol (93%) which is higher than its homogeneous analogues. The catalyst also exhibits excellent catalytic activity for the Heck cross-coupling and cyanation reactions of various substituted and non-substituted aryl halides. CONCLUSIONS: Results demonstrate that the catalyst is robust and stable and can be recovered quantitatively by simple filtration and reused several times without loss of activity. (C) 2010 Society of Chemical Industry