Uniform silver nanoparticles on tunable porous N-doped carbon nanospheres for aerobic oxidative synthesis of aryl nitriles from benzylic alcohols

Tunable N-doped carbon nanospheres from sucrose as carbon source and Tris(2-aminoethyl)amine (TAEA) as nitrogen source by a simple and easily reproducible method were prepared. It was demonstrated that the tunable N-doping of carbon spheres could be realized by altering the ratio of TAEA in the raw materials. The content of doped nitrogen, surface area, pore volume and pore size of carbon nanospheres were increased with the increasing of TAEA amount in the hydrothermal process. Prepared N-doped carbon nanospheres act as solid ligand for anchoring of Ag NPs which generated via chemical reduction of Ag ions. Benzylic alcohols and aldehydes were converted into the aryl nitriles by using Ag/N-CS-1 nanospheres as the catalyst and O-2 as the oxidant, efficiently. This catalyst was stable and could use for 6 successful runs.