Nanoscale Fe ₂ O ₃ -Based Catalysts for Selective Hydrogenation of Nitroarenes to Anilines

Abstract

Production of anilines--key intermediates for the fine chemical, agrochemical, and pharmaceutical industries--relies on precious metal catalysts that selectively hydrogenate aryl nitro groups in the presence of other easily reducible functionalities. Herein, we report convenient and stable iron oxide (Fe2O3)-based catalysts as a more earth-abundant alternative for this transformation. Pyrolysis of iron-phenanthroline complexes on carbon furnishes a unique structure in which the active Fe2O3 particles are surrounded by a nitrogen-doped carbon layer. Highly selective hydrogenation of numerous structurally diverse nitroarenes (more than 80 examples) proceeded in good to excellent yield under industrially viable conditions.

Metal organic framework-mediated synthesis of highly active and stable Fischer-Tropsch catalysts

“…The comparison demonstrates that the MOF-derived solids display productivities, on a total catalyst weight basis, one order of magnitude higher than these benchmarks, even when the MOF-based catalysts contain a lower amount of iron. This simple and potentially universal design strategy opens the door to the controlled manufacture of highly dispersed and stable metal nanoparticles in porous matrices, one of the major challenges in materials science and industrial catalysis 40 .…”

Hydrothermal Carbon Enriched with Oxygenated Groups from Biomass Glucose as an Efficient Carbocatalyst

“…[6a] Selective reduction of nitroarenes represents an important method to prepare corresponding aromatic amines with respect to both industrial application and academic research. [12] When the initial glucose concentration for the preparation of HTC decreased from 10 to 2.5 wt%, the nitrobenzene conversion using corresponding HTC as catalysts increased from 47.1 to 61.5% (Table 1), which was higher than that on other carbon catalysts such as UDD, HHT and graphite. Although activated carbon gave a bit higher conversion than HTC-2.5G, the surface area of activated carbon is nearly 52 times higher than that of HTC-2.5G.…”

Green synthesis of nitriles using non-noble metal oxides-based nanocatalysts

“…In the last decade, the development of non-noble metal-based catalysts [28][29][30][31] , especially nanomaterials [32][33][34] , for organic synthesis has become a prime topic and is crucial for the advancement of green and sustainable industrial processes. Last year, we reported the preparation of nanoscale cobalt and iron oxides, which constitute excellent catalysts for highly selective hydrogenation process 33,34 .…”