Ligand-free gold nanoclusters confined in mesoporous silica nanoparticles for styrene epoxidation
Type
ArticleAuthors
Alshankiti, Buthainah
Almaksoud, Walid
Habeeb Muhammed, Madathumpady Abubaker
Anjum, Dalaver H.
Moosa, Basem

Basset, Jean-Marie

Khashab, Niveen M.

KAUST Department
Advanced Membranes and Porous Materials Research CenterChemical Science Program
Electron Microscopy
Imaging and Characterization Core Lab
KAUST Catalysis Center (KCC)
Physical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division
Smart Hybrid Materials (SHMs) lab
Smart Hybrid Materials Laboratory (SHMs), Advanced Membranes and Porous Materials Center, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Thuwal 23955-6900 Saudi Arabia Email: niveen.khashab@kaust.edu.sa
Date
2020Submitted Date
2019-12-15Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/662677
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
We present a novel approach to produce gold nanoclusters (Au NCs) in the pores of mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) by sequential and controlled addition of metal ions and reducing agents. This impregnation technique was followed to confine Au NCs inside the pores of MSNs without adding external ligands or stabilizing agents. TEM images show a uniform distribution of monodisperse NCs with an average size of 1.37 ± 0.4 nm. Since the NCs are grown in situ in MSN pores, additional support and high temperature calcination are not required to use them as catalysts. The use of Au NC/MSNs as a catalyst for the epoxidation of styrene in the presence of tert-butyl hydroperoxide (TBHP) as a terminal oxidant resulted in an 88% conversion of styrene in 12 h with a 74% selectivity towards styrene epoxide. Our observations suggest that this remarkable catalytic performance is due to the small size of Au NCs and the strong interaction between gold and the MSNs. This catalytic conversion is environmentally friendly as it is solvent free. We believe our synthetic approach can be extended to other metal NCs offering a wide range of applications.Citation
Al-Shankiti, B., Al-Maksoud, W., Habeeb Muhammed, M. A., Anjum, D. H., Moosa, B., Basset, J.-M., & Khashab, N. M. (2020). Ligand-free gold nanoclusters confined in mesoporous silica nanoparticles for styrene epoxidation. Nanoscale Advances, 2(4), 1437–1442. doi:10.1039/c9na00781dSponsors
This work was supported by the King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST). We thank Dr Mohamed Nejib Hedhili for XPS analysis and Dr Edy AbouHmad for solid state NMR spectroscopy.Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)Journal
Nanoscale AdvancesAdditional Links
http://xlink.rsc.org/?DOI=C9NA00781Dhttps://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2020/na/c9na00781d
ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1039/c9na00781d