Magnetically recyclable silica-coated ferrite magnetite-K montmorillonite nanocatalyst and its applications in O, N, and S-acylation reaction under solvent-free conditions.

Novel silica-coated ferrite nanoparticles supported with montmorillonite (K) have been prepared successfully by using a simple impregnation method. Further, these nanoparticles were characterized by using different analytical methods like FT-IR, PXRD, EDS, and FE-SEM techniques. In addition, these nanoparticles have been explored for their catalytic activity for the O, N, and S-acylation reactions under solvent-free conditions which gave moderate to excellent yields in a much shorter reaction time. Moreover, these nanoparticles could easily be separated out from the reaction medium after the reaction completion by using an external magnetic field and have been re-used for 10 cycles without any significant loss of the catalytic activity.