Nowadays, heterogeneous catalysts are widely used in both laboratory and industry as they can be conveniently separated from reaction mixtures, making such catalysts reusable. Also, using heterogeneous catalysts help decrease the amount of heavy metals released into the environment. In this study, we developed heterogeneous catalysts for Suzuki-Miyaura reaction by using graphene oxide (GO) as palladium (Pd) nanoparticles support. Catalysts were synthesized by reducing Pd²⁺ ions in GO dispersions under 2 different conditions. In the first condition, a catalyst was prepared in ethanol solution at 60°C whereas in the second condition, a catalyst was prepared by adding formic acid into water at 80°C. We found that the catalyst prepared by the latter condition gave a higher yield when tested. Consequently, we selected the latter condition in preparing a new catalyst using p-phenylenediamine-functionalized GO as the support. All catalysts were characterized by Raman spectroscopy, FT-IR spectroscopy, powder XRD and ICP-OES. Finally, all catalysts were tested using Suzuki-Miyaura reaction. We found that our new catalyst gave rise to the excellent yield with the highest reusability of 4 cycles.
