In this work, a novel light-active magnetic Pd catalyst was prepared through decorating three-dimensional graphene with Fe3O4@SiO2@Imino-Pd nanoparticles (denoted as 3D-Graphene Fe3O4@Imino-Pd (0)). This catalyst showed high catalytic activity for the Suzuki cross-coupling reaction under visible light irradiation. This noteworthy catalyst activity can be due to the high dispersion of magnetic imino-palladium complex (FI@Pd) nanoparticles on graphene aerogel (GA). Notably, the presence of Fe3O4 in the composite, as a ferrite magnetic material, has strong magnetic properties, and thus Pd photocatalyst can be easily recovered from the reaction mixture by applying an external magnet and used repeatedly. The produced photocatalyst was characterized by XRD, FT-IR, TEM, SEM, VSM, XPS, BET, ICP-OES and UV-Vis DRS. Green chemistry approach, visible light as an unlimited energy source, low reaction time, high yield, magnetic separation and non-toxicity of the nanohybrid catalyst are the main merits of this protocol.
