A highly efficient Co-based catalyst fabricated by coordination-assisted impregnation strategy towards tandem catalytic functionalization of nitroarenes with various alcohols

Abstract

A well-defined hexamethylenetetramine (abbreviated as HMTA) based two-dimensional (2D) MOFs metalloligand (termed Zn-HMTA), with free uncoordinated tertiary amine groups, has been synthesized via solution diffusion method for the first time. The crystal structure of 2D Zn-HMTA metalloligand was determined by the single crystal X-ray diffraction (SCXRD). The SCXRD and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analyses have revealed that the 2D Zn-HMTA metalloligand is rich in- free tertiary amine groups, which are of strong coordination ability to transition metal ions (e.g. Ni2+, Co2+, Zn2+, Cu2+). As a result, a 2D bimetallic Co@Zn-HMTA MOFs was synthesized via coordination-assisted impregnation (CAI) strategy attributed to the unique feature of strong coordinated ability of free tertiary amine groups. Furthermore, a series of self-supported Co-ZnO-CN nanocatalysts were afforded upon the as-synthesized Co@Zn-HMTA MOFs served as a self-sacrificial template for pyrolysis at different temperatures. The optimized catalyst (termed as Co-ZnO@CN-CAI) demonstrated the excellent catalytic performance for hydrogenation-alkylation tandem reaction in comparison with the classic ZnO@CN composite (derived from Zn-HMTA MOFs) supported metallic Co catalyst (Co-ZnO@CN-IWI) prepared by incipient wetness impregnation method. Moreover, the kinetic study was also performed to confirm that the alkylation is the rate-determining step in the hydrogenation-alkylation tandem reaction. The origin of enhanced catalytic performance of Co-ZnO@CN-CAI and the role of Co@Zn-HMTA MOFs precursor have been explored by way of various characterizations, e.g. HADDF-STEM-EDS, SEM-EDS, 13C MAS NMR, XRD, Raman and XPS, etc. It is anticipated that the prepared low-cost and easily prepared 2D Zn-HMTA metalloligand will become a general template for synthesis of highly self-supported catalysts with coordination-assisted impregnation strategy (CAI) for various catalytic reactions.