Highly Efficient and Chemoselective Tandem Hydroformylation‐Hydrogenation of Alkenes to Alcohols over g‐CN Supported Bimetallic Rh and Co Nanoparticles Catalysts

Abstract

AbstractThe objective of the tandem hydroformylation‐hydrogenation of alkenes to corresponding alcohols was to design an efficient and stable heterogeneous catalyst. To this end, a series of novel heterogeneous graphitic carbon nitride (g‐CN) supported bimetallic Rh−Co nanoparticle catalysts (Rh−Co/g‐CN) were prepared and subsequently studied for this one‐pot two‐step reaction. The lamellar structure makes Rh and Co nanoparticles with diameters of <1 nm and 20 nm, respectively, homogeneously deposited on the surface of g‐CN layers, exhibit remarkable conversion of styrene (99.9 %) and chemoselectivity for alcohol (87.8 %). More importantly, Co nanoparticles are found to play an important role in the improvement of the chemoselectivity for alcohol due to the formation of catalytic active species [HCo(CO)y]. Besides the detailed investigation of the catalytic properties of Rh−Co/g‐CN under different reaction conditions, the reuse of Rh−Co/g‐CN was conducted for five times and no evident decrease in the activity and chemoselectivity was observed. Therefore, we expect that this work could offer an initial insight into g‐CN‐based heterogeneous catalyst on the tandem hydroformylation‐hydrogenation reaction.