GrafeoPlad Palladium: Insight on Structure and Activity of a New Catalyst Series of Broad Scope

GrafeoPlad-Pd, a new metal-organic alloy comprised of Pd nanoparticles doped with 3D-entrapped graphene oxide, has promising applicative potential in sustainable synthetic organic chemistry. Besides hydrogenation, the metal nanopowder comprising the material is also active and relatively stable in cross-coupling reactions carried out consecutively. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) surface investigation and density functional theory (DFT) calculations are applied to gain new insight into the structure and potential new catalytic activity of this new class of molecularly doped metals.