Synthesis of new zirconium complex supported on MCM-41 and its application as an efficient catalyst for synthesis of sulfides and the oxidation of sulfur containing compounds

Abstract

In the present work, we report synthesis of new zirconium complex supported on mesoporous silica by anchoring of adenine on the wall of functionalized MCM-41, then reacted with ZrOCl2. The resultant MCM-41-Adenine-Zr was characterized by FT-IR, XRD, TEM, SEM, TGA, EDX, ICP and BET techniques. It was exhibited that the MCM-41-Adenine-Zr can be used as an efficient and thermally stable nanocatalyst for the oxidation of sulfides, oxidative coupling of thiols and synthesis of sulfides. Moreover, this heterogeneous catalyst can be easily recovered from the reaction mixture by simple filtration and reused for several consecutive cycles without noticeable change in its catalytic activity.