Magnetization of urea-based ionic liquid and its application in synthesis of chalcones

Chalcones are an interesting target class of compounds which extensively investigated due to their biological, medical and industrial applications [1,2]. In this work, magnetite nanoparticles (MNPs) was prepared by co-precipitation of Fe2+ and Fe3+ salts in the presence of choline chloride (CC):2urea as a deep eutectic solvent (DES) [3,4]. Then MNPs was dispersed in CC:2urea to give the core-shell MNPs@CC:2urea. MNPs@CC:2urea was characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), X-ray diffraction patterns (XRD), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET), field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), and vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM). The synergic effects of DES and MNPs led to a high catalytic performance for MNPs@CC:2urea versus individual MNPs or CC:2urea in synthesis of chalcone derivatives. The advantages of the present method are short reaction time, easy separation of catalyst by an external magnet, efficiency, mild reaction conditions at room temperature, atom economy, and low loading of this recyclable hybrid catalyst.