Investigation of the crystal structure of Cu-Fe bimetal oxide and their catalytic activity for the Baeyer–Villiger oxidation reaction

Abstract

The aerobic oxidation procedure used some effective non-noble-metal catalysts has been extensively attracted in laboratory and industrial research. This work synthesizes Fe-Cu hybrid via a facile chemical method, which was found that the catalyst presents a perfect and stable reaction activity for the Baeyer–Villiger (B–V) oxidation reaction with Benzaldehyde and air as complex oxidant. It was proved that the addition of Fe component could not only improve the activity of the catalyst and reduce the overall activation energy, but also change the crystal structure of the catalyst, which were demonstrated by a series of characterization analysis and the dynamic experiments. Furthermore, it was discovered that this composite catalyst could be reused four cycles and the catalyst can be easily separated by an external magnet. These findings affirmed that this catalyst was a useful magnetic material for B–V oxidation reaction and this work opens up an avenue to design more powerful non-noble-metal catalysts for industrial chemistry.