Experimental and computational study of the catalytic activity of Pd and PdCu nanoparticle catalysts and clusters supported on reduced graphene oxide and graphene acid for the suzuki cross-coupling reaction

The catalytic activity of Pd and PdCu nanoparticle catalysts and clusters supported on reduced graphene oxide (RGO) and graphene acid (GA) toward the Suzuki cross-coupling reaction between bromobenzene and phenylboronic acid is investigated experimentally and computationally. The experimental results indicate that the bimetallic PdCu nanoparticle catalysts supported on RGO or GA outperform the supported Pd catalysts and that the PdCu/RGO catalyst exhibits superior activity, reaching a full conversion to the biphenyl product in only 15 min under ambient conditions. The experimental results show that both the Pd and PdCu catalysts have higher activities when supported on RGO than when supported on GA. The computational results using density functional theory show that the RGO provides relatively better support for the C-C coupling reaction than GA. Investigations based on the charge analysis have further revealed that the RGO is a better charge donor and acceptor than GA, facilitating both the reaction's oxidative addition and reductive elimination steps by reducing the respective barrier heights. Doping a Cu atom near the Pd reaction site is shown to enhance this effect further. The relative reactivity trends of RGO- and GA-supported Pd and PdCu clusters obtained from the DFT calculations show exact agreement with the experimental results.