Carbon, an abundant, inexpensive, and nonmetallic material, is an inimitable support in heterogeneous catalysis, and variable carbonaceous materials have been utilized to support metal nanoparticle catalysts. We developed an efficient and stable heterogeneous catalyst with highly dispersed metallic palladium nanoparticles embedded in an ordered pore channel of mesoporous carbon and first applied the catalyst to construct imides from amides using aryl esters as an acylation reagent via C-O activation. The catalyst represents excellent catalytic performance and could be reused and recycled five times without any significant decrease in activity. The heterogeneous nature of metallic state palladium was proven to be the active center in the acylation reaction.
© 2022 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.