Impregnated copper on magnetite as catalyst for the O-arylation of phenols with aryl halides

Nanoparticle Fe3O4 encapsulated CuO, as a heterogeneous catalyst, is a facile system for the synthesis of diaryl ethers by the cross-coupling reaction of various substituted aryl halides with various substituted phenols, which avoids using any type of expensive ligand and can be recovered from the reaction mixture by using a simple magnet. Moreover, this catalyst can be reused three times with high catalytic activity. (C) 2013 Ying-Peng Zhang and Yun-Shang Yang. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Chinese Chemical Society. All rights reserved.