FULL PAPER Palladium(II) Immobilized Onto the Glucose Functionalized Magnetic Nanoparticle as a New and Efficient Catalyst for the One‐pot Synthesis of Benzoxazoles Firouz Matloubi Moghaddam | Vahid Saberi | Sepideh Kalhor | Nazila Veisi Laboratory of Organic Synthesis and Natural Products, Department of Chemistry, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran Correspondence Firouz Matloubi Moghaddam, Laboratory of Organic Synthesis and Natural Products, Department of Chemistry, Sharif University of Technology, Azadi Street, PO Box 111559516, Tehran, Iran Email: matloubi@sharif.edu Funding information Sharif University of Technology (SUT) Palladium(II) have been immobilized into the nano magnetic Fe 3 O 4 which was functionalized with glucose in order to achieve a one‐pot synthesis of 2‐ substituted benzoxazole derivatives with high yields in the diverse range of organic solvents. The nano catalyst is highly dispersive in polar solvents and can be easily recovered and reused for 6 runs without significant loss of its activity. Finally, the catalyst was fully characterized by FT‐IR, TGA, CHN, SEM, EDX and atomic absorption spectroscopy. KEYWORDS benzoxazole, dispersive magnetic nanoparticle, glucose, palladium 1 | INTRODUCTION 2‐Arylbenzoxazoles are important class of heterocyclic compounds which have been widely used in pharmaceuti- cal industry and medicinal chemistry. [1] so far, broad range of application of these structures such as HIV‐reverse tran- scriptase inhibitors [2] , anticancer drugs [3] , cathepsin S inhibitors, [4] 5‐HT 3 receptor partial agonists, [5] DNA topo- isomerase inhibitors, [6] peroxisomes proliferator‐activated receptor γ (PPAR‐γ) antagonists, [7] and estrogen receptor‐β agonists have been studied. [8] In addition, they have also application in the treatment of stroke, depression, immune diseases, and cerebral ischemia. [9] Moreover, most of the benzoxazole containing com- pounds exhibit biological profile. These compounds can interact with target protein because of their structural properties. It is demonstrated that O and N atoms of benzoxazole which are able to form hydrogen‐bond can affect the acceptors and the aromatic ring of benzoxazole derivatives which have this potential to generate both π‐π stacking and π‐cation interactions with the host molecule might be essential for bioactivity of these structures. [10] The benzoxazole scaffold are also present in a number of natural products such as salvianen and pseudosalvianen. [11,12] According to the points discussed above, many researches focusing on the biological activity of benzoxazole derivatives against cancer cell lines such as MCF‐7 and HepG2 essentially. [13] Benzoxazoles motifs have potential use in the synthesis of dyes because of their fluorescent nature [14] and also it is indicated that the benzoxazole based compounds have effective use in the synthesis of various photochromic materials [15] , mesogenic polymers [16] and liquid crystals [17,18] Due to the importance of 2‐substituted benzoxazole derivatives, many studies have been focused on the syn- thesis and transformations of trans‐2‐[β‐(2‐Furyl)vinyl] benzoxazole. [19] In order to synthesize benzoxazole derivatives in the past years, different methods have been developed, such as cyclization of 2‐aminophenols with aldehydes and carboxylic acids. [20] Noticeably, the catalytic construction of this frame- work has become an ideal platform to develop and testify new catalysts including homogeneous catalysts such as ruthenium/iridium complexes, Pd(OAc) 2 , RuCl 3 , Ortho‐ iodoxybenzoicacid (IBX), 4‐methoxy‐TEMPO (2,2,6,6‐ tetramethyl‐piperidyl‐1‐oxy), FeCl 3 , CuCl 2 , and NaCN. [21] On the other hand, most of the reactions catalyzed by homogeneous catalysts suffer from contamination of Received: 16 October 2017 Revised: 28 November 2017 Accepted: 28 November 2017 DOI: 10.1002/aoc.4240 Appl Organometal Chem. 2018;e4240. https://doi.org/10.1002/aoc.4240 Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/aoc 1 of 11