A well-designed sandwich-like MS/Pd@MS hollow nanosphere for Suzuki coupling reactions of aryl bromides and arylboronic acids

A hollow core-shell nanosphere with sandwiched Pd nanoparticles between two-layered mesoporous silica was designed through layer-by-layer assembly. The nanocomposite exhibited outstanding catalytic activity and thermal stability in Suzuki coupling reactions of aryl bromides and arylboronic acids. The conversion of bromobenzene was up to 82.8% in 1 h and 68.2% in 5 min, and the sandwich structure was well-kept after running five cycles, with few Pd NPs mass loss.