Cubical Palladium Nanoparticles on C@Fe3O4 for Nitro reduction, Suzuki-Miyaura Coupling and Sequential Reactions

•Carbon-carbon (CC) bond forming and hydrogenation reactions catalyzed by palladium nanoparticles (Pd NPs) is an active area of great interest and relevance. A plethora of reaction conditions and substrates has been examined, but still there is enough room for catalyst improvement. CC bond formation and hydrogenation are always desirable and are actively pursued. Facet-dependent catalytic activity in organic transformation is a highly attractive direction in nanoparticle research, particularly in Pd. This is because when tuning the crystalline shapes and altering the exposed facets on the surface of Pd NPs, the catalytic properties of Pd NPs can be greatly regulated.•The present work describes the facet dependent catalytic activity of palladium cubical nanoparticles (Pd cNPs) embedded C@Fe3O4core-shellmagneticnanoreactor(Pd cNPs/C@Fe3O4) prepared via hydrothermal condition as a heterogeneous catalytic system for reductive reactions such as hydrogenation of various nitroaromatic compounds, Suzuki-Miyaura reactions for various halo derivatives and sequential reaction involving the CC coupling followed by hydrogenation reactions with promising industrial applications. The facet dependent catalytic activity of both Pd cubical and spherical NPs in hydrogenation and Suzuki-Miyaura coupling reaction as heterogeneous catalytic system are analyzed. The salient features of our catalyst are efficiency, ligand free conditions, wide substrate scope, reusability, magnetic separability and gram scale applicability along with the ability to catalyse the sequential reactions. This approach will offer alternative synthetic strategies for the practical construction of substituted biaryl and hydrogenated compounds.