O. Yari, D. Elhamifar and M. Shaker
Journal of Organometallic Chemistry 940 (2021) 121787
Fig. 5. Recyclability of Ti-ILOS catalyst
Fig. 3. SEM image of the Ti-ILOS catalyst
sult is delivered at 70 ºC (Table 1, entries 9-13). In the following,
the epoxidation of the model substrate was investigated in the ab-
sence of the Ti-ILOS in which no oxidation product was obtained
indicating the presence of the Ti-ILOS is required to perform the
reaction (Table 1, entry 12 versus entry 14). Also, it was found that
the reaction is not performed in the absence of oxidant (Table 1,
entry 12 versus entry 15). In the next, to show the exact role of Ti
species in the catalytic process, the activity of titanium-free ILOS
material was studied and the result was compared with that of Ti-
ILOS (Table 1, entry 12 versus entry 16). Interestingly, the Ti-free
ILOS delivered no epoxide product under the same conditions as
Ti-ILOS, confirming that the epoxidation process is completely cat-
alyzed by immobilized-Ti sites. Accordingly, the use of 0.014 g of
Ti-ILOS at 70 ºC and solvent-free media in the presence of H O
2
2
were chosen as optimal conditions.
To show the generality and substrate scope of designed catalytic
system, several alkenes were applied as substrate under optimal
conditions. The results showed that Ti-ILOS catalyst can epoxidize
styrene and α-methylstyrene efficiently and selectively. Also, cyclo-
hexene, cyclooctene, (Z)-stilbene and 1-octene were converted to
their corresponding epoxides with excellent selectivity by using Ti-
ILOS catalyst. It should be noted that the by-products synthesized
during the epoxidation of each substrate are shown in Table 2.
In the next study, the recyclability of the catalyst was inves-
tigated. For this, after reaction was completed in the epoxidation
of styrene as a test model, the catalyst was separated and washed
with EtOH. The recycled catalyst was used in the next reaction af-
ter being dried under vacuum. It was found that the Ti-ILOS cat-
alyst can be recovered and reused for at least five runs with no
significant decrease in its efficiency (Fig. 5).
Fig. 4. XPS spectrum in the Ti2p region of the Ti-ILOS catalyst
tocol for performing the aforementioned process, the oxidation of
styrene was selected as a reaction model and the effect of cat-
alyst loading, solvent, oxidant and temperature was investigated
(
Table 1). As can be seen, the investigations showed that increas-
ing the amount of catalyst has a significant effect on increasing
the product yield (Table 1, entries 1-4). As shown in the presence
of 0.005, 0.01, 0.014 and 0.02 g of the designed catalyst, respec-
tively, 15, 28, 35 and 35% yield of desired epoxide are obtained.
Therefore, the use of 0.014 g of catalyst was selected as optimum
catalyst loading for next studies. The effect of solvent study also
showed between water, THF, toluene, methanol and solvent-free
media, under solvent-free conditions the best result is delivered
Next, a leaching test was also performed to determine the true
nature of the catalyst under applied conditions. For this, after the
epoxidation was completed about 45%, the catalyst was separated
from reaction mixture and the catalyst-free residue was allowed to
continue under optimal condition. This showed no further progress
in the epoxidation process indicating the high stability and no
leaching of active titanium centers under applied media.
(
Table 1, entry 3 versus entries 5-8). Importantly, between several
oxidants in hand, molecular oxygen and hydrogen peroxide were
used due to their low cost, environmentally-friendly and also pro-
duce water as the sole by-product. The study showed that the
Finally, the efficiency of Ti-ILOS was compared with some of the
catalysts used recently in the epoxidation of alkenes. According to
Table 3, our catalyst is better than and/or comparable with former
catalysts in terms of reaction conditions and recycling times. The
high efficiency of our designed catalyst is attributed to the valu-
H O oxidant compared to oxygen is more effective in the epox-
2
2
idation process (Table 1, entry 8 versus entry 9). It was also found
that the reaction temperature considerably impresses the reaction
rate. As shown, between 25, 40, 60, 70 and 80 ºC, the best re-
4