As an important raw material for
the synthesis of polycaprolactone,
a significant alternative for the nondegradable plastic, ε-caprolactone
(ε-CL) monomer is typically produced through the Baeyer–Villiger
oxidation of cyclohexanone (CyO). In this work, a solvent-free,
highly efficient, and nonmetallic catalytic system was developed to
produce the ε-CL monomer with dioxygen as the oxidant and benzaldehyde
(BEA) as the co-oxidant. Nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (NCNTs) as
the catalyst boost the catalytic activity (10.09% conversion, 10.06%
yield of ε-CL), much higher than other carbon catalysts. The
normalized specific activity of NCNTs reached 2964.80 mmol/g/h and
20.02 mmol/m2/h, which are 2–4 orders of magnitude
higher than the state-of-the-art catalysts. The structure-dependent
activity result shows that the ratio between pyridine nitrogen (NP) and graphite nitrogen (NG) on the surface of
NCNTs positively affects the catalytic performance. Oxygen functionalities
on the NCNT surface inhibit the activity by suppressing the auto-oxidation
of BEA, which unexpectedly increases aldehyde efficiency. Finally,
this process could be scaled up to a molar-scale reaction with a similar
activity, which lays down the foundation of the industrial application
of the solvent-free Baeyer–Villiger oxidation catalyzed by
nanocarbons.