Our Alumnus Liu Kuansheng Won the Second Prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award

Palladium-catalyzed Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling of aryl halides with arylboronic acids represents an efficient way for forming carbon-carbon bonds, particularly for synthesis of biaryls as building blocks of pharmaceutical products. In spite of this progress, isolation of homogenous catalysts from reaction mixtures is sometimes quite difficult and nobel metal leaching is problematic leading to highly toxic palladium (II) residues. Although heterogeneous catalytic systems made it possible to isolate and recycle the recovered catalysts. However, its catalytic activity is far lower than that of homogeneous catalysis. Therefore, how to design and synthesize efficient heterogeneous catalysts for Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling reaction is still a great challenge.

With the help of their research experience in functional coordination chemistry and catalysts for coupling reaction, researchers in the Key Laboratory of Inorganic Molecule-Based Chemistry of Liaoning prepared magnetic recovery, low palladium loading (ppm level) and Pd single-atomic dispersion catalysts operated on a La-organic frameworks through the post-synthetic modification steps of magnetic nanoparticles loading, Schiff base reaction and PdCl₂ coordination. The catalyst showed very active, quite stable, magnetically recoverable and reusable in coupling of bromoor iodoaryls with arylboronic acids, affording practically quantitative yields of biaryls (>99%) and the highest TON (21443) and TOF (42886 h^-1) among those in literature. The catalyst has been recycled up to 12 times without significant loss of the catalytic activity.

This research achievement has been published in authoritative journal in the field of catalysis - Journal of Catalysis (Journal of Catalysis 2018, 316, 116). Prof. Sun Yaguang and Dr. Xiong Gang from the College of Applied Chemistry is the corresponding author and first author, respectively. This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (21671139 and 21501122)