Immobilizing of palladium on melamine functionalized magnetic chitosan beads: A versatile catalyst for p-nitrophenol reduction and Suzuki reaction in aqueous medium.

In this study, an environmental-friendly palladium catalyst with high efficiency, magnetic, recoverability, reusability, and excellent stability was prepared and thoroughly characterized by the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Elemental mapping, Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). Results demonstrates that melamine provides a coordination point on the surface of chitosan microspheres, which provides a platform for the uniform distribution of palladium (II) and combines with palladium (II) firmly to avoid unnecessary leaching of nanoparticles. Besides, Fe3O4/CS-Me@Pd microcapsules exhibited high catalytic performance in reducing p-NP in water at room temperature (150-300 s). This composite was also effective in the Suzuki-Miyaura coupling reaction under mild conditions with high catalytic performance (TON = 3.8 × 104, TOF = 7.6 × 104). Reproducibility experiments also showed that Fe3O4/CS-Me@Pd microcapsules have high recovery efficiency and can work at least six times during these two catalytic reactions. The hot filtration test indicated that the catalyst has heterogeneous nature.