Silver nanoparticles embedded over mesoporous organic polymer as highly efficient and reusable nanocatalyst for the reduction of nitroarenes and aerobic oxidative esterification of alcohols

Silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs) have been finely dispersed at the mesoporous organic polymer via postsynthetic chemical grafting over mesoporous poly-triallylamine (MPTA-1). The resulting Ag-MPTA-1 nanomaterial has been characterized by elemental analysis, powder x-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), EPR spectroscopy and MS elemental analysis. The Ag-MPTA-1 acts as an efficient heterogeneous nanocatalyst in the reduction of substituted nitrobenzenes via transfer hydrogenation. The material also showed excellent catalytic activity in one-step catalytic oxidative esterification of primary alcohols using molecular oxygen as a green oxidant. The catalyst is air-stable, inexpensive, easy to prepare and reused several times without significant decrease in activity and selectivity. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.