Renaissance of immobilized catalysts. New types of polymer-supported catalysts, ‘microencapsulated catalysts’, which enable environmentally benign and powerful high-throughput organic synthesis

Immobilized catalysts have been reinvestigated from two aspects; as keys to environmentally benign chemical processes and high-throughput organic synthesis for combinatorial chemistry. While most known polymer-supported catalysts are less active than the corresponding original catalysts, new types of polymer-supported catalysts, microencapsulated catalysts, have been developed. The catalysts were immobilized on to polymers using physical envelopment by polymer backbones and interaction between π electrons of benzene rings of the polystyrenes used as polymer backbones and vacant orbitals of the catalysts. Microencapsulated Sc, Os, Pd and Ru catalysts have been successfully prepared and high activities have been attained. In all cases, no leaching of the catalysts occurred, and the immobilized catalysts were recovered quantitatively by simple filtration and reused without loss of activity. It is noted that this method enables direct immobilization of metals onto polymers, and that normally unstable species such as Pd(0)(PPh3) can be kept stable by this immobilization technique. It is expected that other metal catalysts can be immobilized using this microencapsulation technique.