Insight in chitosan aerogels derivatives -Application in catalysis

Thanks to an aerogel formulation, an efficient heterogeneous modification of chitosan is described and offers the convenient covalent-functionalisation of primary amine of insoluble microspheres into secondary benzylic-amines with various functionalities. The SEC, XRD and textural analyses provided a better insight into the chitosan aerogels and showed that this synthetic process allows high substitution ratio (> 80%) without depressing the desirable properties of the well-defined chitosan macromolecular structure. As a proof of principle, original catalytic chitosan aerogels flanked by a phosphine-pendant were prepared and applied successfully in the heterogenous pallado-catalyzed allylic substitution reaction.