Autocombustion‐Promoted Synthesis of Lanthanum Iron Oxide: Application as Heterogeneous Catalyst for Synthesis of Piperidines, Substituted Amines and Light‐Assisted Degradations

Abstract

AbstractAn autocombustion technique was adopted to synthesize the Perovskite structured Lanthanum iron oxide nanoparticles (LaFeO3, abbreviated as LFO NPs). This technique offered lots of benefits such as short reaction time along with quick heating rate. LFO NPs were fabricated at different calcination temperatures (300‐800 °C) through the aid of sucrose as chelating agent. The prepared LFO NPs were well characterized by various techniques like X‐ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT‐IR), Vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), Ultraviolet‐Visible spectroscopy (UV‐Vis), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET), X‐ray Photo‐Electron Spectroscopy (XPS) and Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) which affirmed that highly crystalline LFO NPs were obtained at 700 °C. Subsequently, the catalytic activity of the LFO NPs was surveyed for three independent approaches: (i) for the synthesis of functionalized piperidines through activation of carbonyl groups in the reacting partners (ii) for the sunlight‐assisted mineralization of health hazardous food colorant, Allura Red AC (iii) for the hydrogenation of nitro aromatic compounds (NACs) using NaBH4 (sodium borohydride) as source of hydrogen in aqueous medium at room temperature.