Since its discovery in the early 1970s, the Heck reaction has been applied to a diverse array of fields, ranging from natural products synthesis to materials science as well to bioorganic chemistry. This powerful carbon-carbon bond-forming process has been practiced on an industrial production of fine chemicals, such as octyl methoxycinnamate.

In this thesis, we first prepared zirconium phosphate (ZP) nanoparticles as an effective, eco-friendly and recyclable solid acid catalyst. Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) were used as the organic matrix which were the dispersing agents and acted as a template for the nanoparticles. It seems H-bonds between ZP and PVA or PVP along polymer chains lead to a better dispersion of in situ formed ZP. Pure ZP nanoparticles with hexagonal shape were obtained after calcination of PVA/ZPor PVP/ZP.