Facile synthesis of highly active Pd-Cu nanowires catalyst through a simple wet-chemical strategy for ligand-free Suzuki cross coupling reaction

The construction and design of nanomaterials are important for improving their performance. Here we present a simple one-pot wet-chemical method for the preparation of alloyed Pd-Cu nanowires using octylphenoxypolyethoxyethanol (NP-40) as structure-directing and stabilizing agents. The obtained nanocrystals display outstanding catalytic activity for ligand-free Suzuki cross coupling reaction under mild conditions, and can be easily recovered and reused for at least 5 consecutive cycles without showing significant loss of catalytic activity.