Cu/Ni-doped sulfated zirconium oxide immobilized on CdFe2O4 NPs: a cheap, sustainable and magnetically recyclable inorgano-catalyst for the efficient preparation of α-aminonitriles in aqueous media

Abstract

A new multifunctional bimetallic nanocatalyst was prepared by immobilization of Cu/Ni-doped sulfated zirconium oxide on magnetic cadmium ferrite (CdFe2O4@SiO2@ZrO2/SO42−/Cu/Ni) and used as an efficient recyclable catalyst for one-pot as well as stepwise preparation of α-aminonitriles under mild conditions. The magnetic nanocatalyst was characterized by FTIR, TGA, VSM, XRD, EDX, FE-SEM, and TEM analyses. Also, the surface acidity of the catalyst was measured by pyridine adsorption assay. The catalyst possesses various active sites which could catalyst a variety of aromatic and aliphatic aldehydes to the corresponding α-amionitriles under moderate to high yields in the presence of aniline. Furthermore, transformation of ketones to the desired α-amionitriles and some bis-aminonitriles was also performed by this method. The catalyst could be readily recovered from the reaction mixture and reused for several times without significant loss of activity. A general and efficient method has been developed for transformation of a variety of aliphatic, aromatic aldehydes and ketones to the corresponding α-aminonitriles using a multifunctional recyclable CdFe2O4@SiO2@ZrO2/SO42−/Cu/Ni nanocatalyst.