Acceleration of Suzuki coupling reactions by abundant and non-toxic salt particles

Abstract

Enhancement of reaction efficiency using non-toxic, abundant, and cheap additives is an interesting topic in green chemistry. In this paper, we report the first work to study the effect of salt particles on organic reactions in different solvents, in which the salts were not soluble, and it was discovered that NaCl, KCl, Na₂SO₄ and K₂SO₄ particles could considerably accelerate Suzuki coupling reactions catalyzed by the Pd nanocatalysts. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) studies indicated that there exist strong interactions between the salts and the catalyst (Pd) and between the salts and the reactants, which are important reasons for the synergistic effect of the catalyst and the salts. The application of salt particles suspended in organic reaction systems may become a useful strategy to develop new and green reaction routes.