Copper ferrite as a magnetic heterogeneous catalyst for the synthesis of 2-Amino-4H-Chromenes

The development and improvement of eco-friendly technologies is the most challenging task in the contemporary chemistry and chemical industry. With this objective, the reduction of wastes together with the use of renewable feedstocks, environmentally benign solvents and reagents, effectively recoverable catalysts are important parameters to achieve more sustainable approaches according to the green chemistry principles. Due to high atom economy, great efficiency and procedural convenience in the construction of complex structures from three or more reactants, multicomponent reactions (MCRs) have been an efficient and powerful tool in the modern synthetic chemistry. And the discovery of novel MCRs and development of known MCRs are highly compatible with the aims of sustainable and green chemistry [1-4]. In this work, an efficient and eco-friendly procedure for the synthesis of 2-Amino-4H-Chromenes has been developed through a one-pot three-component condensation of aldehydes with 2-naphthol and malononitrile in the presence of magnetic Copper ferrite nanoparticle as a heterogeneous catalyst under solvent-free conditions (Scheme 1). This new procedure offers several advantages such as short reaction time, excellent yields, operational simplicity and without any tedious work-up for catalyst recovery or product purification. Moreover, the catalyst could be simply separated by an external magnet and reused four times without significant loss of catalytic activity.