Synthesis of polymer-supported dendritic palladium nanoparticle catalysts for Suzuki coupling reaction

New bead-shaped heterogeneous nanoparticle catalysts viz., amino-terminated poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) grafted on poly(styrene)-co-Poly(vinylbenzylchloride) (PS-Poly(VBC)) matrices immobilized/stabilized with palladium nanoparticle were prepared by simplified procedure. The first step is the preparation of PS-Poly(VBC) beads by suspension polymerization method. Second, the PAMAM G(0) G(1) and G(2) dendrimers were grafted individually onto the PS-Poly(VBC) matrices via divergent method by repeating two reactions, i.e., Michael addition of methyl acrylate to surface amino groups of aminomethylated PS-Poly(VBC) matrixes followed by amidation of the resulting esters with ethylene diamine. The resulting three types of PAMAM G(0), G(1) and G(2) grafted on PS-Poly(VBC) matrices were complexed individually with PdCl2 and thus yielded the corresponding new bead-shaped heterogeneous nanoparticle catalyst immobilized with PdNPs. The appearance of surface plasmon resonance band noticed at 547 nm in UV confirms the formation of PdNPs. The SEM result shows that the intensity of white patches due to immobilization of PdNPs increases with generation number and XRD reveals that the crystalline nature was decreased against generation number of the PAMAM. The catalytic efficiency of PS-Poly(VBC)-NH2-PdNPs-G(0), G(1) and G(2) catalysts were examined by Suzuki coupling reaction performed in mixture of water/ethanol. The observed reaction yield reveals that the activity was proportional to the generation number of PAMAM grafted onto the PS-Poly(VBC) matrices. The percentage of reaction yield (biphenyl) is sustained to ≈70 % even up to five cycles and this in turn confirms the stability of the catalysts. These catalysts can be used to conduct the Suzuki-coupling reaction in continuous mode operation in industrial scale.