Efficiently catalytic transfer hydrogenation of aryl and heteroaryl halides by ultrafine palladium nanoparticles confined into UiO-66

The hydrodehalogenation of aryl and heteroaryl halides (AHHs) is very crucial for academic and industrial applications. Herein, ultrafine palladium nanoparticles (Pd NPs) with the size distribution about 1.77 ± 0.35 nm, were in-situ synthesized and confined into the metal-organic framework of UiO-66 (named as [email protected]) by impregnation reduction method without tedious post-reducing step. [email protected] shows excellent activity with a high conversion (>90%) efficiency in the catalytic transfer hydrogenation (CTH) of AHHs under mild water systems utilizing ammonium formate as hydrogen donor. Furthermore, [email protected] maintains highly excellent stability (conversion >95%) after 5 times reused cycles without losing catalytic activity and leaching Pd nanoparticles. This study supplies a new method for hybrid catalysts by immobilizing ultrafine Pd nanoparticles into crystalline MOFs, displaying efficient transform performance for halogen compounds by catalytic hydrogenation.