Amino-functionalized porous chitosan as a solid base catalyst for solvent-free synthesis of chalcones

• Amino-functionalized porous chitosan catalyst was developed. • Simple W/O emulsion of chitosan and agarose generate porous chitosan with a high SSA. • Grafting with APTMS leads to increased the accessible amine. • Combined W/O emulsion followed by grafting with APTMS improve the catalytic activity. • The catalysts can be used for four-cycle without significant activity loss. The introduction of heterogeneous catalysts from biomass enables new opportunities for the development of heterogeneous base-organocatalysts for various organic syntheses. Among them, amino-functionalized porous chitosan with high specific surface area has promising properties but its use as a base catalyst in chalcone synthesis is still rarely reported. Amino-functionalized porous chitosan as a solid base catalyst was fabricated from porous chitosan grafted with aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTMS). The prepared hybrid materials were characterized with pore and specific surface area (N 2 -sorption), FTIR, SEM, and accessible amine. The results reveal that the amount of APTMS had a significant effect on the physicochemical properties of amino-functionalized porous chitosan catalysts. The hybrid materials were employed as a solid base catalyst for solvent-free synthesis of chalcones. The catalyst offered good yield synthesis, lower temperature, less reaction time, highly selective, stable, recoverable, and can be reused four times without significant loss in performance.