Induction heating enables efficient heterogeneous catalytic reactions over superparamagnetic nanocatalysts

Most catalytic processes are achieved by heating the whole reaction systems including the entire reactor, substrate and solvent, which leads to energy loss and obvious heat transfer limits. In this study, induction heating was employed to boost the catalytic Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling reactions by using conductive superparamagnetic microspheres with loaded Pd nanoparticles as heterogeneous catalysts. It was found that, at the same apparent reaction temperatures, the reactions by adopting the induction heating all exhibit better catalytic performance with higher conversion and yield, as compared to the reactions using conventional joule heating. The improvement is mainly attributed to the localized heating effect endowed by high efficiency of the heat transfer from the heat source to catalytic sites, which dissipates the electromagnetic energy through Néel relaxation mechanism. Moreover, it has be found that the reactions have been largely accelerated, resulting in much shorter reaction time required to approach a given value of reactant conversion. These results indicate that the unique heating method based on the superparamagnetic nanomaterials as both the inductive component and catalyst support holds a promising application for fast and efficient heterogeneous catalytic process, and exhibits potential for improving energy transfer efficiency and reducing the side reactions attributed to the uneven temperature profile.