Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Journal of Porous Materials https://doi.org/10.1007/s10934-017-0545-4 Synthesis of Ni(II)-3,5-dichloro-2-hydroxybenzenesulfonyl chloride supported SBA-15 and its application as a nanoreactor catalyst for the synthesis of diaryl sulfdes via reaction of aryl halides with thiourea or S 8 Zakieh Yousofvand 1  · Maryam Hajjami 1  · Farshid Ghorbani 2  · Raziyeh Ghafouri‑Nejad 1 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2017 Abstract In the present work, SBA-15 mesoporous grafted with 3-(trimethoxysilyl)-1-propanethiol as a linker and subsequently reacted by 3, 5-dichloro-2-hydroxybenzenesulfonyl chloride. Then to obtain the new catalyst Ni(II) was supported on functionalized SBA-15 by using Ni(NO 3 ) 2 as Ni(II) source. The Ni/SBA-15 catalyst was characterized with SEM, EDS, ICP, XRD, TGA, FT-IR and N 2 sorption–desorption analysis. The key advantages of this heterogeneous catalyst are inexpensive, short reac- tion times, excellent yields, recovery and reusability. Keywords SBA-15 · C–S coupling · S 8  · Thiourea · Aryl halide · Diaryl sulfde 1 Introduction In the past decades, the development and application of heterogeneous catalysts and silica-based materials have been in the focus of research interests. Among them, mesoporous materials such as MCM-41 and SBA-15 with high surface area, large pore size and thermal stability were used as templates for the syntheses of shape-selective new materials. The surfaces of these materials could be easily modifed with various ligands to improve their physical and chemical properties. In the other hand, development of the mesoporous materials in fact provide a new possibility for immobilization of homogeneous catalysts [1–7]. These catalysts were used in various organic syntheses such as oxidation of sulfdes to sulfoxides and thiols to disulfdes by Zr(IV)-ninhydrin supported MCM-41 and MCM-48 [8], Cr (salen) complex immobilized on MCM-41 in oxi- dation of benzyl alcohol [9], iridium (III) hydride complex grafted on SBA-15 for alkene hydrogenation [10] and etc. Therefore, the development of methods to provide these heterogeneous catalysts in industry is very important due to the ease of catalyst separation from the desired product. Elemental sulfur has been known since antiquity and has recently become popular in the chemical industries. For example, its application in the synthesis of organic materi- als are of growing interested due to availability. Already various papers and review articles were available for the synthesis of aromatic sulfdes in the literatures [11–16]. Synthesis of diaryl sulfdes usually per forms by reduction of aryl sulfones or aryl sulfoxides under strong reducing agents. To overcome this problem, C–S coupling reac- tion between aryl halides and thiols has been developed. This reaction catalyzed by transition- metal compounds [17–20] such as MCM-41-immobilized bidentate nitro- gen copper (I) complex (MCM-41-2N-CuI) [21], SBA-15/ (SH) XPd–NPY [22], Cu (OAc) 2 [23], MCM-41-immo- bilized 1,10-phenanthroline-copper (II) complex [24] and etc. Also, diaryl sulfdes form a great part of the structure medicinal compounds [25] such as anti HIV, anticancer, anti-Alzheimer [26], Lissoclinotoxin and Lissoclibadin [27] and etc. In the present study, We hereby report design and synthesis of Ni(II)-3,5-dichloro-2-hydroxybenzene- sulfonyl chloride supported SBA-15 catalyst, via a new route for the synthesis of diaryl sulfdes from the coupling * Maryam Hajjami mhajjami@yahoo.com; m.hejami@ilam.ac.ir 1 Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Ilam University, P.O. Box 69315516, Ilam, Iran 2 Department of Environment, Faculty of Natural Resource, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj 66177-15177, Iran