Highly efficient palladium(II) hydrazone based catalysts for the Suzuki coupling reaction in aqueous medium

Synthesis of a new family of air stable palladium(II)benzhydrazone complexes of the general formula [PdCl(PPh3)(L)] (where HL = thiophene aldehyde benzhydrazones) incorporating PPh3 and chloride as co-ligands has been described through a single and convenient step with good yields. All the new complexes have been fully characterized by means of elemental analysis, IR, UV-vis, and NMR spectral methods. The molecular structures of three of the complexes were determined by single crystal X-ray crystallography, which confirm the coordination mode of benzhydrazone and reveal the presence of a distorted square planar geometry around the Pd ion. The complexes 1-5 (0.05 mol%) have been found to be a highly active catalytic system in the mono and double Suzuki-Miyaura cross coupling reaction of deactivated aryl and heteroaryl bromides with different types of aryl boronic acids in neat water and the maximum yield was up to >99%. Notably, these catalysts work well with ultra-low loading of the catalysts and show high turnover numbers in a short time towards different substrates. Moreover, the catalysts could be simply recovered and reused five times without significant loss of efficiency.