Abstract

In current organic synthesis, choice of appropriate catalysts is becoming more and more important. Among these catalysts, noble metal nanoparticles catalyst is one of the most important catalysts which has been successfully applied in hydrogenation, dehydrogenation, selective oxidation, alkylation and other reactions. At the same time, recent advances in nanotechnology allow the researchers to prepare noble metal nanoparticles with appropriate size and shape, and interestingly, properties of nano-sized noble metals are different from those of bulk metals. Therefore, noble metal nanoclusters or colloids have been attracting much attention in catalytic reactions due to their special physical and chemical properties. In this review, the applications of noble metal nanoparticles with different sizes and structures in organic reactions are described; and all the sections in this review have been subdivided according to the reaction types. Besides, the mechanism will be also briefly mentioned.

Keywords: Alkylation, catalysis, catalyst, colloidal particles, coupling reaction, cycloaddition, dehydrogenation, hydrogeneration, hydroformylation, nanoparticles, noble metal nanoparticles, nanotechnology, organic synthesis, oxidation, rearrangement reaction, ring openingring closure reaction