Iron-Oxide-Supported Ultrasmall ZnO Nanoparticles: Applications for Transesterification, Amidation, and O-Acylation Reactions

An efficient maghemite–ZnO nanocatalyst has been synthesized via a simple coprecipitation method, where ZnO nanoparticles are uniformly decorated on the maghemite core and characterized by XRD, SEM-EDS, ICP-AES, XPS, TEM, HRTEM, and Mossbauer spectroscopy; maghemite nanoparticles are in the typical size range 10–30 nm with ultrasmall (3–5 nm) ZnO nanoparticles. A competent and benign protocol is reported for various organic transformations, namely, transesterification, amidation, and O-acylation reaction in good to excellent yields (75–97%) using magnetically separable and reusable maghemite–ZnO nanocatalyst.