Metal-Support Cooperative Catalysts for Environmentally Benign Molecular Transformations

Metal-support cooperative catalysts have been developed for sustainable and environmentally benign molecular transformations. The active metal centers and supports in these catalysts could cooperatively activate substrates, resulting in high catalytic performance for liquid-phase reactions under mild conditions. These catalysts involved hydrotalcite-supported gold and silver nanoparticles with high catalytic activity for organic reactions such as aerobic oxidation, oxidative carbonylation, and chemoselective reduction of epoxides to alkenes and nitrostyrenes to aminostyrenes using alcohols and CO/H₂ O as reducing reagents. This high catalytic performance was due to cooperative catalysis between the metal nanoparticles and basic sites of the hydrotalcite support. To increase the metal-support cooperative effect, core-shell nanostructured catalysts consisting of gold or silver nanoparticles in the core and ceria supports in the shell were designed. These core-shell nanocomposite catalysts were effective for the chemoselective hydrogenation of nitrostyrenes to aminostyrenes, unsaturated aldehydes to allyl alcohols, and alkynes to alkenes using H₂ as a clean reductant. In addition, these solid catalysts could be recovered easily from the reaction mixture by simple filtration, and were reusable with high catalytic activity.