An environmentally friendly route for grafting of molybdenum carbonyl onto a diaminosilane-modified SBA-15 molecular sieve and its catalytic behaviour in olefin epoxidation

A simple route has been established for grafting molybdenum carbonyl onto the surface of a diaminosilane-modified SBA-15 molecular sieve. The successful grafting of the molybdenum carbonyl species onto diamine-functionalized SBA-15 was evident from FT-IR studies. The resultant molybdenum-carbonyl-complex-grafted SBA-15 (SBA-DA-Mo) materials show promising activity for the epoxidation of various olefins with good conversion (90-95%) and the formation of epoxide as the major product. The catalytic activity remains constant over several runs.