Synthesis and Characterization of Vanadium-containing Mesoporous Silica and its Application in the Catalysis of Oxidation Reaction

Vanadium-based materials are widely used as catalysts for oxidation of organic compounds. The catalytic properties of vanadium catalysts for oxidation are related closely to the state and the stability of vanadium species. Therefore, a series of vanadium-containing MCM-41 silica were designed and developed in this study, and their catalytic application for oxidation reactions was evaluated as well.In the first part of work, the chemical anchoring effect of Al(III) or Ti(IV) heteroatoms on the dispersion of V (V) in MCM-41 type silica was investigated using a quantitative analysis of diffuse reflectance UV-visible spectra. The characteristic properties of prepared materials were determined by various characterization such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), N2 sorption measurement, Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy, UV-visible spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy. UV-visible spectra of hydrated and dehydrated samples evidenced the coexistence of several V(V) species of different oligomerization and hydration levels. The global blue shift of the band in the presence of Al(III) or Ti(IV) additives was then assigned to a higher proportion of less clustered and isolated V(V) species. The stronger beneficial effect of Ti on the vanadium dispersion is consistent with a higher stability of the X-O-V bridges moving from X = Si to X = Al and Ti. In the second part, new mesoporous silica materials containing vanadium species were synthesized according to the molecular stencil patterning technique. Molecular stencil patterning is developed specifically for silica templated with ionic surfactants used as masking agent to sequentially immobilize via covalent bonding (grafting) different functions. This molecular surface engineering was proved to improve the vanadium species dispersion according to Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA), Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy (NMR), Infrared spectroscopy (IR) and UV-visible spectroscopy. The incorporation of titanium species played again the role to immobilize the vanadium species as the results in previous work. The V/Ti ratio should be less than 1 to control the formation of clusters of vanadium species.Lastly, the vanadium-containing materials were applied to the liquid phase oxidation of cyclohexane into cyclohexanol (A) and cyclohexanone (K). A mixture of these two products is often called K/A oil in the industrial chemical production. K/A oil is widely used as a raw material for adipic acid and caprolactam in the nylon industry. The catalysis results proved that the modification by adding titanium chemical anchors combined with the MSP technique improve the catalytic properties of vanadium-containing heterogeneous catalysts.In conclusion, the dispersion and stability of vanadium active sites has been improved in new syntheses of vanadium-containing MCM-41 type silica by combining both anchoring heteroatoms and molecular stencil patterning techniques. Such a novel design leads to better catalytic performance in oxidation reaction in correlation with the structural and physical characteristics of the material.