Knoevenagel condensation reactions catalyzed by nitrogen-containing mesoporous carbon materials under mild reaction conditions

Abstract

A series of nitrogen-containing ordered mesoporous carbon (NOMC) materials have been prepared by a convenient soft-templating method. The physicochemical properties of the NOMC samples were characterized by N2 adsorption and desorption, small-angle XRD, FT-IR, XPS, and TEM. As solid base catalysts, NOMCs exhibited remarkable catalytic activities for Knoevenagel condensation reactions under mild reaction conditions, depending on their synthetic calcination temperature. Among them, NOMC-500 showed the highest catalytic activity. For Knoevenagel condensation of benzaldehyde and malononitrile, the conversion of aldehyde was higher than 85% under 50 °C. Moreover, the catalysts had good catalytic applicability for wide substrates. The catalytic activity obtained on NOMC catalyst is compared with other nitrogen-containing carbon-based materials. Nitrogen-containing ordered mesoporous carbon materials, prepared by a soft-templating method under aqueous solution and as solid base catalysts, demonstrated high catalytic activity in Knoevenagel condensation reactions under mild reaction conditions.