Ag/SiO 2 as a recyclable catalyst for the facile green synthesis of 3-methyl-4-(phenyl)methylene-isoxazole- 5(4H)-ones Surya Narayana Maddila 1 • Suresh Maddila 1 • Werner E. van Zyl 1 • Sreekantha B. Jonnalagadda 1 Received: 10 April 2015 / Accepted: 4 July 2015 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 Abstract An efficient and facile green method for synthesis of 3-methyl-4-(phe- nyl)methylene-isoxazole-5(4H)-one (4a-m) via room temperature reaction of hydroxy- lamine, ethylacetoacetate and substituted aromatic aldehydes is designed, using Ag/SiO 2 as catalyst with water as solvent. This protocol offers several advantages, such as it being a benign, energy conserving and eco-friendly reaction with products obtained in excellent yields (88–93 %). The reaction requires relatively short reaction times ( \1 h), a simple workup procedure with good atom efficiency and easily recoverable catalyst. The heterogeneous catalyst, Ag/SiO 2 , was fully characterized and is reusable without loss of activity for up to seven cycles with marginal activity loss. Graphical Abstract N O O CH 3 OEt O O NH 2 OH.HCl CHO R R Ag/SiO 2 H 2 O / R.T, 1h 4a-m Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11164-015-2167-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Sreekantha B. Jonnalagadda jonnalagaddas@ukzn.ac.za 1 School of Chemistry and Physics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville Campus, Chiltern Hills, Durban 4000, South Africa 123 Res Chem Intermed DOI 10.1007/s11164-015-2167-2