Fabrication and Characterization of Heterogeneous Sheet-like Mesoporous Cu₃(PO₄)₂⋅3H₂O Catalysts and Selective Catalytic Oxidation of Styrene

In this work, without template and additives, sheet-like mesoporous Cu₃(PO₄)₂ ⋅ 3H₂O was successfully used to create by a simple solvothermal method. XRD, FT-IR, BET and SEM methods were used to characterize the structure and properties of the samples that were produced. The results revealed that the stacked mesoporous structure of the target sheet-like product was well-formed, and the pore diameter was centered at 3.17 nm. In addition, the sheet-like mesoporous Cu₃(PO₄)₂ ⋅ 3H₂O shows excellent ability to improve the yield of styrene oxide by the research of solvents, catalyst dosage, molar ratio of styrene/TBHP, the reaction temperature and the reaction time in the reaction system. Thus, when the solvent was acetonitrile, the catalyst dosage was 10 mg, the molar ratio of styrene/TBHP was 1 : 4, the reaction temperature was 80 °C, and the reaction time was 8 h, the yield of styrene was 74.7 % and the conversion of styrene was 96.7 %, demonstrating that styrene oxide and benzaldehyde were the major products of the process. The cyclic stability of the catalyst was further assessed, and implied that the catalytic activity, selectivity, and the catalyst‘s properties fails to change significantly after five cycles, which further indicates the superior stability of the catalyst.