Titania-silica nanoparticles ensemblies assisted heterogeneous catalytic strategy for the synthesis of pharmacologically significant 2,3-diaryl-3,4-dihydroimidazo[4,5-b]indole scaffolds

Present paper elicits the multicomponent reaction (MCR) strategy assisted by titania nanoparticles hosted on silica (TiO₂.SiO₂ NPs) as heterogeneous catalyst to synthesize a series of pharmacologically significant 2,3-diaryl-3,4-dihydroimidazo4,5-b]indole derivatives. To the best of our information, the use of isatin as one of the precursors was hitherto unreported. The decrease in reaction time, low catalyst loading, high product yield (up to 92%), and excellent reusability of the catalyst (up to 7 cycles) put this protocol under the umbrella of green chemistry tenets. Characterization of catalysts was achieved through a number of techniques viz., energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy, field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra of adsorbed pyridine, temperature-programmed desorption of ammonia, and porosity measurements by nitrogen adsorption (Brunauer–Emmett–Teller BET] method). Also, the structures of synthesized compounds were corroborated on the basis of FTIR, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), mass, and elemental analyses data.