Mesoporous SBA-15 supported metal/metal oxide as reusable catalyst

Mesoporous SBA-15 exhibits fascinating properties such as very high surface area, 2-D hexagonally ordered pores, high thermal stability etc. This material generally contains a large number of surface silanol groups, so pre and post synthetic surface modification of SBA-15 with different organic functional moieties is generally done to provide anchor for nanoparticles. It is traditionally done by grafting the surface silanol groups with various organosilane species such as 3-APTMS, 3-MPTMS etc. This book describes the synthesis, characterization and activity study of two metals (Au0 and Pd0) and two metal oxides (Fe3O4 and ZnO) nanoparticles supported on SBA-15. The aforementioned metal and metal oxide nanoparticles were generated either on neat SBA-15 or on functionalized SBA-15 support. The catalytic of activity of the as-synthesized metal and metal oxide nanoparticles embedded in SBA-15 support were investigated for some selective organic transformation reactions such as reduction of 4-nitrophenol and selective oxidation of cyclohexane, partial hydrogenation of various alkynes, transfer hydrogenation of various alkenes, A3 coupling reaction and Biginelli condensation reaction.