Taking advantage of tungsten oxide inherent Brønsted–Lewis
acidity, the first series of WO3–SiO2(HIPE) monolithic (MUB-104(x) series) catalysts
bearing multiscale porosity have been designed through integrative
chemistry. At the microscopic length scale, beyond X-ray diffraction
(XRD) revealing the WO3 monoclinic structure, local electron
spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy addresses g values clearly located
at the frontier between extended WO3 phases and polyanion
clusters, in agreement with scanning transmission electron microscopy
high-angle annular dark field (STEM-HAADF) investigations. NH3-TPD shows that when the tungsten loading is increased from
10 wt % for MUB-104(1) to 24 wt % for MUB-104(3), the amount of acidic
sites significantly decreases from 0.35 to 0.08 mmol of NH3 g–1, respectively, in agreement with the particle
sizes. The MUB-104(x) series offers efficient cosolvent-less
heterogeneous cycling catalysis toward both Friedel–Crafts
alkylation and acylation syntheses. MUB-104(1) carries the highest
turnover number (TON) of 121 and turnover frequency (TOF) of 20 h–1, while for acylation, MUB-104(1) carries the highest
TON of 117 and TOF of 26 h–1. Besides, we find out
that the catalysts offer good selectivity, where 30/70% of ortho-
and para-substituted alkylated products are obtained. Considering
the acylation reaction, the selectivity is even higher, reaching 100%
toward the para-substituted acylated product. The catalyst, due to
its intrinsic monolithic character, can be easily extracted from the
reactive media, recycled, and re-employed further.